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COPYRIGHT DEPOSrD 



IMMANUEL KANT'S 



Critique of Pure Reason 



En Commemoration of tfje Cmtntarg of ttg 
Jfrst publication 



TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH 
BY 

F. MAX MULLER 



Nefo gork '^ j 

THE MACMTLLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1896 

All rights reserved 







Copyright, 1896, 
By THE M.UMII.I.W < oMPANY. 



First edition printed 1881. Reprinted with alterations, 1896. 




XortoootJ 19rrss 

J. S. Cushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



DEDICATION 

Sir, 



To further, so far as in us lies, the growth of the sciences 
is to work in your Excellency's own interest, your own interest 
being intimately connected with them, not only through the 
exalted position of a patron of science, but through the far more 
intimate relation of a lover and enlightened judge. For that 
reason I avail myself of the only means within my power of 
proving my gratitude for the gracious confidence with which your 
Excellency honours me, as if I too could help toward your noble 
work. 

[Whoever delights in a speculative life finds with moderate 
wishes the approval of an enlightened and kind judge a powerful 
incentive to studies the results of which are great, but remote, and 
therefore entirely ignored by vulgar eyes.] 

To you, as such a judge, and to your kind attention I now sub- 
mit this book, placing all other concerns of my literary future 
under your special protection, and remaining with profound 

respect 1 

Your Excellency's 

Most obedient Servant, 

IMMANUEL KANT. 

KONIGSBERG, March 29, 178 1. 

1 The second paragraph is left out and the last sentence slightly altered in the 
Second Edition. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Dedication xiii 

Table of Contents to First Edition xv 

Preface to First Edition xvii 

Introduction 1-12 

I. The Idea of Transcendental Philosophy . . . 1 

II. Division of Transcendental Philosophy . . . .10 

I. The Elements of Transcendentalism . . . 15-39 

First Part. Transcendental ^Esthetic 1 5-39 

First Section. Of Space 18 

Second Section. Of Time . . . . ' . 24 

General Observations on Transcendental ^Esthetic . . 34 
Second Part. Transcendental'Logic .... 40-51 

Introduction. The Idea of a Transcendental Logic . . 40 
I. Of Logic in General . . . . . .40 

II. Of Transcendental Logic ...... 44 

III. Of the Division of General Logic into Analytic and 

Dialectic 46 

IV. Of the Division of Transcendental Logic into Tran- 

scendental Analytic and Dialectic .... 49 

First Division. Transcendental Analytic . . . 52-237 
Book I. Analytic of Concepts . .... 54-106 

Chapter I. Method of Discovering all Pure Concepts 

of the Understanding . . . . . -55 

Section 1. Of the Logical Use of the Understanding 

in General ........ 56 

v 



vi Table of L 'out cms 



I'.V.I 



(Book I. Chapter I.) 

Section 2. Of the Logical Function of the Under- 
standing in Judgments 58 

section 3. Of the Pure Concepts ol the Understand- 
ing, oi «'t the ( ategories 63 

Chapter 11. Of tin- Deduction of the Pure Concepl 

the l mil rstanding ....... 70 

Section 1. of the Principles of .t Transcendental 

Deduction in ( icncral ...... 70 

Section -. Of the ,1 priori Grounds tor the Possibil- 
ity of K\|>< litnei j() 

1. 01 the Synthesis «•• Apprehension in Intuition 82 

thesis oi Reproduction in Imagination 
v Of the Synthesis ol Recognition in Concepts . 85 
4. Preliminar) Explanation "t the Possibility of the 

Categories as Knowledge a priori ... 91 
Section 3. of the Relation of the Understanding to 
1 objects in General, and the Possibility of Know- 
ing them a priori ....... 94 

Summary Representation of the Correctness, and of 
the Only Possibility of this Deduction of the Pure 
Concepts of the Understanding . . . .105 

Book II. Analytic of Principles .... 107-237 
Introduction. Of the Transcendental Faculty of Judg- 
ment in General . 108 

Chapter I. Of the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of 

the Understanding 112 

Chapter II. System of all Principles of the Pure Under- 
standing 121 

Section 1. Of the Highest Principle of all Analytical 

Judgments 123 

Section 2. Of the Highest Principle of all Synthetical 

Judgments 126 



129 

133 
i 3 6 
144 
149 

155 

172 



Table of Contents vii 

PAGE 

(Book II. Chapter II.) 

Section 3. Systematical Representation of all Syn- 
thetical Principles of the Pure Understanding 

1. Axioms of Intuition 

2. Anticipations of Perception .... 

3. Analogies of Experience .... 

First Analogy. Principle of Permanence 
Second Analogy. Principle of Production 
Third Analogy. Principle of Community 

4. The Postulates of Empirical Thought in General 178 

Chapter III. On the Ground of Distinction of all Sub- 
jects into Phenomena and Noumena . . .192 

Appendix. Of the Amphiboly of Reflective Concepts, 
owing to the Confusion of the Empirical with the 
Transcendental Use of the Understanding . .212 

Second Division. Transcendental Dialectic . . . 238-564 
Introduction 238 

1. Of Transcendental Appearance (Illusion) . . ' . 238 

2. Of Pure Reason as the seat of Transcendental Illu- 

sion 242 

A. Of Reason in General . . . . . 242 

B. Of the Logical Use of Reason .... 246 

C. Of the Pure Use of Reason .... 247 

Book I. Of the Concepts of Pure Reason . . 252-274 

Section 1. Of Ideas in General 254 

Section 2. Of Transcendental Ideas .... 261 
Section 3. System of Transcendental Ideas . . 270 

Book II. Of the Dialectical Conclusions of Pure Reason 275-564 
Chapter I. Of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason . . 278 
First Paralogism. Of Substantiality .... 284 
Second Paralogism. Of Simplicity .... 286 
Third Paralogism. Of Personality .... 294 
Fourth Paralogism. Of Ideality 298 



viii Table of Content* 

(Book II. Chapter I.) 

Consideration on the Whole o\ Pure Psychology, as 
affected bv these Paralogisms 



308 
328 
330 
339 
344 
352 
362 
37o 



Chapter 11. The Antinom) of Pure Reason . 
Section 1. System of Cosmological Ideas , 
Section 2. Antithetic oi Pure Reason 
First Conflict of the Transcendental Ideas 
Second Conflict ..... 

Third Conflict 

irth Conflict ..... 
Section v < )t the Interest of Reason in these Con- 
flicts 379 

Section 4. Of the Transcendental Problems of Pure 
Reason, and the Absolute Necessity of their 
Solution ........ 389 

ion 5. Sceptical Representation of the Cosmolog- 
ical Questions in the Four Transcendental Ideas . 396 

Section 6. Transcendental Idealism as the Key to the 

Solution of Cosmological Dialectic . . . 400 

Section 7. Critical Decision of the Cosmological 

Conflict of Reason with itself .... 405 

Section 8. The Regulative Principle of Pure Reason 

with Regard to the Cosmological Ideas . -413 

Section 9. Of the Empirical Use of the Regulative 
Principle of Reason with Regard to all Cosmolog- 
ical Ideas 419 

I. Solution of the Cosmological Idea of the Total- 
ity of the Composition of Phenomena in an 

Universe 420 

II. Solution of the Cosmological Idea of the Total- 
ity of the Division of a Whole given in Intu- 
ition 425 



Tabic of Contents ix 

PAGE 

(Book II. Chapter II. Section 9.) 

Concluding Remarks on the Solution of the 
Transcendental-mathematical Ideas, and Pre- 
liminary Remark for the Solution of the 
Transcendental-dynamical Ideas . . . 428 

III. Solution of the Cosmological Ideas with Regard 

to the Totality of the Derivation of Cosmical 
Events from their Causes .... 432 

Possibility of a Causality through Freedom, in Har- 
mony with the Universal Law of Necessity . 436 

Explanation of the Cosmological Idea of Freedom 
in Connection with the General Necessity of 
Nature . . . . . . . 439 

IV. Solution of the Cosmological Idea of the Total- 

ity of the Dependence of Phenomena, with 
Regard to their Existence in General . . 452 

Chapter III. The Ideal of Pure Reason . .-, 459 

Section 1. Of the Ideal in General .... 459 
Section 2. Of the Transcendental Ideal . . . 462 
Section 3. Of the Arguments of Speculative Reason 

in Proof of the Existence of a Supreme Being . 471 
Section 4. Of the Impossibility of an Ontological 

Proof of the Existence of God .... 477 
Section 5. Of the Impossibility of a Cosmological 

Proof of the Existence of God .... 486 
Discovery and Explanation of the Dialectical Illusion 
in all Transcendental Proofs of the Existence of 

a Necessary Being 495 

Section 6. Of the Impossibility of the Physico-theo- 

logical Proof ....... 499 

Section 7. Criticism of ail Theology based on Spec- 
ulative Principles of Reason ..... 508 



x Table of ( ontents 

PAGE 

(Book II. Chapter III. Section 7.) 

Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic. Of the 

Regulative Use of the Ideas of Pure Reason . 516 

Of the Ultimate Aim of the Natural Dialectic of 

Human Reason 537 

11. Method o] Transcendentalism .... 565-686 
Chapter I. The Discipline of Pure Reason . . . 569 

Section 1. The Discipline of Pure Reason in its Dog 

matical l Fse 572 

Section 2. The Discipline of Pure Reason in its Polem 

ie.il I Fse ......... 593 

The Impossibility of a Sceptical Satisfaction <>i Pun 

Reason in < onflicl with itseli ..... 608 

tion 3. The Discipline ot Pun- Reason with Regard 
to Hypotheses . . . • • • • .617 

Section 4. The Discipline of Pure Reason with Regard 
to its Proofs 



Chapter II. The Canon of Pure Reason . 

Section 1. Of the Ultimate Aim of the Pure Use of 

our Reason 

Section 2. Of the Ideal of the Summum Bonum as 

determining the Ultimate Aim of Pure Reason 
Section 3. Of Trowing. Knowing, and Believing . 



Chapter III. The Architectonic of Pure Reason 
Chapter IV. The History of Pure Reason 

Supplements 687-808 



627 

638 

640 

645 
657 

667 

683 



TO HIS EXCELLENCY 

THE ROYAL MINISTER OF STATE 

BARON VON ZEDLITZ 



TABLE OF CONTENTS TO THE 
FIRST EDITION 1 

PAGES 

Introduction i (i) 

I. ELEMENTS OF TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

PART I. Transcendental /Esthetic . . . 17 (19) 

Section I. Of Space 20 (22) 

Section II. Of Time 27 (30) 

PART II. Transcendental Logic . . -44 (50) 

Division I. Transcendental Analytic in two books, 

with their chapters and sections . . . . 56 (64) 

Division II. Transcendental Dialectic in two books, 

with their chapters and sections .... 254 (293) 

II. METHOD OF TRANSCENDENTALISM. 

Chapter I. The Discipline of Pure Reason . . 607 (708) 

Chapter II. The Canon of Pure Reason . . 682 (795) 

Chapter III. The Architectonic of Pure Reason . 714 (832) 

Chapter IV. The History of Pure Reason . . 731 (852) 



1 Instead of this simple Table of Contents, later editions have a much fuller 
one (Supplement III), which, as Rosenkranz observes, obscures rather than 
illustrates the articulation of the book. 



PREFACE 1 

Our reason (Vernunft) has this peculiar fate that, with 
reference to one class of its knowledge, it is always 
troubled with questions which cannot be ignored, because 
they spring from the very nature of reason, and which 
cannot be answered, because they transcend the powers 
of human reason. 

Nor is human reason to be blamed for this. It begins 
with principles which, in the course of experience, it must 
follow, and which are sufficiently confirmed by experience. 
With these again, according to the necessities of its nature, 
it rises higher and higher to more remote conditions. But 
when it perceives that in this way its work remains for 
ever incomplete, because the questions never cease, it 
finds itself constrained to take refuge in principles which 
exceed every possible experimental application, and never- 
theless seem so unobjectionable that even ordinary com- 
mon sense agrees with them. Thus, however, reason 
becomes involved in darkness and contradictions, from 
which, no doubt, it may conclude that errors must be 
lurking somewhere, but without being able to discover 
them, because the principles which it follows transcend 
all the limits of experience and therefore withdraw them- 

1 This preface is left out in later editions, and replaced by a new preface; 
see Supplement II (Vol. I, p. 364). 



xviii Preface 

selves from all experimental tests. It is the battle-field 
of these endless controversies which is called Metaphysic. 

There was a time when Metaphysic held a royal place 
among all the sciences, and, if the will were taken for the 
deed, the exceeding importance of her subject might well 
have secured to her that place of honour. At present it 
is the fashion to despise Metaphysic, and the poor matron, 
forlorn and forsaken, complains like Hecuba, Modo max- 
ima rcrum, tot generis natisque potens — )iu)ie trahor exul y 
inops (Ovid, Metam. xiii. 508). 

At first the rule of Metaphysic, under the dominion of 
the dogmatists, was despotic. But as the laws still bore 
the traces of an old barbarism, intestine wars and complete 
anarchy broke out, and the sceptics, a kind of nomads, 
despising all settled culture of the land, broke up from 
time to time all civil society. ' Fortunately their number 
was small, and they could not prevent the old settlers 
from returning to cultivate the ground afresh, though 
without any fixed plan or agreement. Not long ago one 
might have thought, indeed, that all these quarrels were 
to have been settled and the legitimacy of her claims 
decided once for all through a certain physiology of the 
human understanding, the work of the celebrated Locke. 
But, though the descent of that royal pretender, traced 
back as it had been to the lowest mob of common ex- 
perience, ought to have rendered her claims very sus- 
picious, yet, as that genealogy turned out to be in reality 
a false invention, the old queen (Metaphysic) continued to 
maintain her claims, everything fell back into the old 
rotten dogmatism, and the contempt from which metaphy- 
sical science was to have been rescued, remained the same 
as ever. At present, after everything has been tried, so 



Preface xix 

they say, and tried in vain, there reign in philosophy 
weariness and complete indifferentism, the mother of chaos 
and night in all sciences but, at the same time, the spring 
or, at least, the prelude of their near reform and of a new 
light, after an ill-applied study has rendered them dark, 
confused, and useless. 

It is in vain to assume a kind of artificial indifferentism 
in respect to enquiries the object of which cannot be in- 
different to human nature. Nay, those pretended indif- 
ferentists (however they may try to disguise themselves 
by changing scholastic terminology into popular language), 
if they think at all, fall back inevitably into those very 
metaphysical dogmas which they profess to despise. 
Nevertheless this indifferentism, showing itself in the 
very midst of the most flourishing state of all sciences, 
and affecting those very sciences the teachings of which, 
if they could be had, would be the last to be surrendered, is 
a phenomenon well worthy of our attention and considera- 
tion. It is clearly the result, not of the carelessness, but 
of the matured judgment 1 of our age, which will no 
longer rest satisfied with the mere appearance of know- 

1 We often hear complaints against the shallowness of thought in our own 
time, and the decay of sound knowledge. But I do not see that sciences 
which rest on a solid foundation, such as mathematics, physics, etc., deserve 
this reproach in the least. On the contrary, they maintain their old reputa- 
tion of solidity, and with regard to physics, even surpass it. The same spirit 
would manifest itself in other branches of knowledge, if only their principles 

^had first been properly determined. Till that is done, indifferentism and 
doubt, and ultimately severe criticism, are rather signs of honest thought. 

' ' Our age is, in every sense of the word, the age of criticism, and everything 
must submit to it. Religion, on the strength of its sanctity, and law, on the 
strength of its majesty, try to withdraw themselves from it; but by so doing 
they arouse just suspicions, and cannot claim that sincere respect which 
reason pays to those only who have been able to stand its free and open 
examination. . 



XX Preface 

ledge. It is, at the same time, a powerful appeal to 
reason to undertake anew the most difficult of its duties, 
namely, self-knowledge, and to institute a court of appeal 
which should protect the just rights of reason, but dismiss 
all groundless claims, and should do this not by means of 
irresponsible decrees, but according to the eternal and 
unalterable laws of reason. This court of appeal is no 
other than the Critique of Pure Reason. 

I do not mean by this a criticism of books and systems, 
but of the faculty of reason in general, touching that 
whole class of knowledge which it may strive after, un- 
assisted by experience. This must decide the question of 
the possibility or impossibility of metaphysic in general, 
and the determination of its sources, its extent, and its 
limits — and all this according to fixed principles. 

This, the only way that was left, I have followed, 
and I flatter myself that I have thus removed all those 
errors which have hitherto brought reason, whenever it was 
unassisted by experience, into conflict with itself. I have 
not evaded its questions by pleading the insufficiency of 
human reason, but I have classified them according to 
principles, and, after showing the point where reason 
begins to misunderstand itself, solved them satisfactorily. 
It is true that the answer of those questions is not such as 
a dogma-enamoured curiosity might wish for, for such curi- 
osity could not have been satisfied except by juggling 
tricks in which I am no adept. But this was not the 
intention of the natural destiny of our reason, and it 
became the duty of philosophy to remove the deception 
which arose from a false interpretation, even though 
many a vaunted and cherished dream should vanish at 
the same time. In this work I have chiefly aimed at 



Preface xxi 

completeness, and I venture to maintain that there ought 
not to be one single metaphysical problem that has not 
been solved here, or to the solution of which the key at 
least has not been supplied. In fact Pure Reason is so 
perfect a unity that, if its principle should prove insuffi- 
cient to answer any one of the many questions started by 
its very nature, one might throw it away altogether, as 
insufficient to answer the other questions with perfect 
certainty. 

While I am saying this I fancy I observe in the face 
of my readers an expression of indignation, mixed with 
contempt, at pretensions apparently so self-glorious and 
extravagant ; and yet they are in reality far more moder- 
ate than those made by the writer of the commonest essay 
professing to prove the simple nature of the soul or the 
necessity of a first beginning of the world. For, while he 
pretends to extend human knowledge beyond the limits 
of all possible experience, I confess most humbly that this 
is entirely beyond my power. I mean only to treat of 
reason and its pure thinking, a knowledge of which is not 
very far to seek, considering that it is to be found within 
myself. Common logic gives an instance how all the 
simple acts of reason can be enumerated completely and 
systematically. Only between the common logic and my 
work there is this difference, that my question is, — what 
can we hope to achieve with reason, when all the material 
and assistance of experience is taken away ? 

So much with regard to the completeness in our laying 
hold of every single object, and the thoroughness in our 
laying hold of all objects, as the material of our critical en- 
quiries — a completeness and thoroughness determined, not 
by a casual idea, but by the nature of our knowledge itself. 



xxii Preface 

Besides this, certainty and clearness with regard to 
form are two essential demands that may very properly 
be addressed to an author who ventures on so slippery an 
undertaking. 

First, with regard to certainty, I have pronounced judg- 
ment against myself by saying that in this kind of enquiries 
it is in no way permissible to propound mere opinions, and 
that everything looking like a hypothesis is counterband, 
that must not be offered for sale at however low a price, 
but must, as soon as it has been discovered, be confiscated. 
For every kind of knowledge which professes to be cer- 
tain a priori, proclaims itself that it means to be taken for 
absolutely necessary. And this applies, therefore, still 
more to a definition of all pure knowledge a priori, which 
is to be the measure, and therefore also an example, of all 
apodictic philosophical certainty. Whether I have ful- 
filled what I have here undertaken to do, must be left to 
the judgment of the reader ; for it only behoves the author 
to propound his arguments, and not to determine before- 
hand the effect which they ought to produce on his judges. 
But, in order to prevent any unnecessary weakening of 
those arguments, he may be allowed to point out himself 
certain passages which, though they refer to collateral 
objects only, might occasion some mistrust, and thus to 
counteract in time the influence which the least hesitation 
of the reader in respect to these minor points might exer- 
cise with regard to the principal object. 

I know of no enquiries which are more important for 
determining that faculty which we call understanding 
(Verstand), and for fixing its rules and its limits, than 
those in the Second Chapter of my Transcendental Ana- 
lytic, under the title of ' Deduction of the Pure Concepts 



Preface xxiii 

of the Understanding.' They have given me the greatest 
but,- 1 hope, not altogether useless trouble. This enquiry, 
which rests on a deep foundation, has two sides. The 
one refers to the objects of the pure understanding, and 
is intended to show and explain the objective value of its 
concepts a priori. It is, therefore, of essential importance 
for my purposes. The other is intended to enquire into 
the pure understanding itself, its possibility, and the 
powers of knowledge on which it rests, therefore its sub- 
jective character ; a subject which, though important for 
my principal object, yet forms no essential part of it, be- 
cause my principal problem is and remains, What and 
how much may understanding (Verstand) and reason (Ver- 
nunft) know without all experience ? and not, How is the 
faculty of thought possible ? The latter would be an en- 
quiry into a cause of a given effect ; it would, therefore, 
be of the nature of an hypothesis (though, as I shall show 
elsewhere, this is not quite so) ; and it might seem as if I 
had here allowed myself to propound a mere opinion, leav- 
ing the reader free to hold another opinion also. I there- 
fore warn the reader, in case my subjective deduction 
should not produce that complete conviction which I ex- 
pect, that the objective deduction, in which I am here 
chiefly concerned, must still retain its full strength. For 
this, what has been said on pp. 82, 83 (92, 93) may possi- 
bly by itself be sufficient. 

Secondly, as to clearness, the reader has a right to 
demand not only what may be called logical or discursive 
clearness, which is based on concepts, but also what may 
be called aesthetic or intuitive clearness produced by intui- 
tions, i.e. by examples and concrete illustrations. With 
regard to the former I have made ample provision. That 



xxiv Preface 

arose from the very nature of my purpose, but it became 
at the same time the reason why I could not fully satisfy 
the latter, if not absolute, yet very just claim. Nearly 
through the whole of my work I have felt doubtful what 
to do. Examples and illustrations seemed always to be 
necessary, and therefore found their way into the first 
sketch ^)\ my work. But I soon perceived the magnitude 
of my task and the number of objects I should have to 
treat; and, when I saw that even in their driest scholastic 
form they would considerably swell my book, I did not 
consider it expedient to extend it still further through 
examples and illustrations required for popular purposes 
only. This work can never satisfy the popular taste, and 
the few who know, do not require that help which, though 
it is always welcome, yet might here have defeated its very 
purpose. The Abbe Terrasson * writes indeed that, if we 
measured the greatness of a book, not by the number of 
its pages, but by the time we require for mastering it, 
many a book might be said to be much shorter, if it were 
not so short. But, on the other hand, if we ask how a 
complicated, yet in principle coherent whole of specula- 
tive thought can best be rendered intelligible, we might be 
equally justified in saying that many a book would have 
been more intelligible, if it had not tried to be so very 
intelligible. For the helps to clearness, though they may 
be missed 2 with regard to details, often distract with re- 
gard to the whole. The reader does not arrive quickly 
enough at a survey of the whole, because the bright col- 

1 Terrasson, Philosophic nach ihrem allgemeinen Einflusse auf alle Gegen- 
stande des Geistes und der Sitten, Berlin, 1762, p. 117. 

2 Rosenkranz and others change fehlen into helfen, without necessity, I 
think. 



Preface xxv 

ours of illustrations hide and distort the articulation and 
concatenation of the whole system, which, after all, if we 
want to judge of its unity and sufficiency, are more im- 
portant than anything else. 

Surely it should be an attraction to the reader if he is 
asked to join his own efforts with those of the author in 
order to carry out a great and important work, according 
to the plan here proposed, in a complete and lasting man- 
ner. Metaphysic, according to the definitions here given, 
[s the only one of all sciences which, through a small but 
united effort, may count on such completeness in a short 
time, so that nothing will remain for posterity but to 
arrange everything according to its own views for didactic 
purposes, without being able to add anything to the sub- 
ject itself. For it is in reality nothing but an. inventory 
of all our possessions acquired through Pure Reason, 
systematically arranged. Nothing can escape us, -because 
whatever reason produces entirely out of itself, cannot 
hide itself, but is brought to light by reason itself, so soon 
as the common principle has been discovered. This abso- 
lute completeness is rendered not only possible, but neces- 
sary, through the perfect unity of this kind of knowledge, 
all derived from pure concepts, without any influence from 
experience, or from special intuitions leading to a definite 
kind of experience, that might serve to enlarge and in- 
crease it. Tecum Jiabita et noris quam, sit tibi curta stipel- 
lex (Persius, Sat. iv. 52). 

Such a system of pure (speculative) reason I hope 
myself to produce under the title of ' Metaphysic of 
Nature.' It will not be half so large, yet infinitely richer 
than this Critique of Pure Reason, which has, first of all, 
to discover its source, nay, the conditions of its possibility, 



xxvi Preface 

in fact, to clear and level a soil quite overgrown with 
weeds. Here I expect from my readers the patience and 
impartiality of a judge, there the goodwill and aid of a 
fellow-worker. For however completely all the principles 
of the system have been propounded in my Critique, the 
completeness of the whole system requires also that no 
derivative concepts should be omitted, such as cannot be 
found out by an estimate a priori, but have to be dis- 
covered step by step. There the synthesis of concepts 
has been exhausted, here it will be requisite to do the 
same for their analysis, a task which is easy and an 
amusement rather than a labour. 

I have only a few words to add with respect to the 
printing of my book. As the beginning had been delayed, 
I was not able to see a clean sheet of more than about 
half of it. I now find some misprints, though they do not 
spoil the sense, except on p. 379, line 4 from below, where 
specific should be used instead of sceptic. The antinomy 
of pure reason from p. 425 to p. 461 has been arranged in 
a tabular form, so that all that belongs to the thesis stands 
on the left, what belongs to the antithesis on the right 
side. I did this in order that thesis and antithesis might 
be more easily compared. 



INTRODUCTION 

[p-i] 

1 I 

THE IDEA OF TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY 

[Experience 1 is no doubt the first product of our un- 
derstanding, while employed in fashioning the raw material 
of our sensations. It is therefore our first instruction, and 
in its progress so rich in new lessons that the chain of all 
future generations will never be in want of new informa- 
tion that may be gathered on that field. Nevertheless, 
experience is by no means the only field to which our 
understanding can be confined. Experience tells us what 
is, but not that it must be necessarily as it is, and not 
otherwise. It therefore never gives us any really gen- 
eral truths, and our reason, which is particularly anxious 
for that class of knowledge, is roused by it rather than 
satisfied. General truths, which at the same time [p. 2] 
bear the character of an inward necessity, must be in- 
dependent of experience, — clear and certain by them- 
selves. They are therefore called knowledge a priori, 
while what is simply taken from experience is said to 
be, in ordinary parlance, known a posteriori or empiri- 
cally only. 

1 The beginning of this Introduction down to ' But what is still more ex- 
traordinary,' is left out in the Second Edition. Instead of it Supplement IV. 






2 Introduction 

Now it appears, and this is extremely curious, that even 
with our experiences different kinds of knowledge are 
mixed up, which must have their origin a priori, and 
which perhaps serve only to produce a certain connec- 
tion between our sensuous representations. For even if 
we remove from experience everything that belongs to 
the senses, there remain nevertheless certain original con- 
cepts, and certain judgments derived from them, which 
must have had their origin entirely a priori, and inde- 
pendent of all experience, because it is owing to them 
that we are able, or imagine we are able, to predicate 
more of the objects of our senses than can be learnt 
from mere experience, and that our propositions contain 
real generality and strict necessity, such as mere empirical 
knowledge can never supply:] 

But l what is still more extraordinary is this, that cer- 
tain kinds of knowledge leave the field of all pos- [p. 3] 
sible experience, and seem to enlarge the sphere of our 
judgments beyond the limits of experience by means of 
concepts to which experience can never supply any cor- 
responding objects. 

And it is in this very kind of knowledge which tran- 
scends the world of the senses, and where experience 
can neither guide nor correct us, that reason prosecutes 
its investigations, which by their importance we consider 
far more excellent and by their tendency far more ele- 
vated than anything the understanding can find in the 
sphere of phenomena. Nay, we risk rather anything, 
even at the peril of error, than that we should surrender 

1 The Second Edition gives here a new heading: — III, Philosophy re- 
quires a science to determine the possibility, the principles, and the extent of 
all cognitions a priori. 



Introduction 3 

such investigations, either on the ground of their uncer- 
tainty, or from any feeling of indifference or contempt. 1 
Now it might seem natural that, after we have left 
the solid ground of experience, we should not at once 
proceed to erect an edifice with knowledge which we 
possess without knowing whence it came, and trust to 
principles the origin of which is unknown, without hav- 
ing made sure of the safety of the foundations by means 
of careful examination. It would seem natural, I say, 
that philosophers should first of all have asked the ques- 
tion how the mere understanding could arrive at all this 
knowledge a prio7'i, and what extent, what truth, and 
what value it could possess. If we take natural [p. 4] 
to mean what is just and reasonable, then indeed nothing 
could be more natural. But if we understand by natural 
what takes place ordinarily, then, on the contrary, nothing 
is more natural and more intelligible than that this exami- 
nation should have been neglected for so long a time. For 
one part of this knowledge, namely, the mathematical, has 
always been in possession of perfect trustworthiness ; and 
thus produces a favourable presumption with regard to 
other parts also, although these may be of a totally dif- 
ferent nature. Besides, once beyond the precincts of ex- 
perience, and we are certain that experience can never 
contradict us, while the charm of enlarging our know- 
ledge is so great that nothing will stop our progress 
until we encounter a clear contradiction. This can be 

1 The Second Edition adds here : ' These inevitable problems of pure 
reason itself are, God, Freedom, and Immortality. The science which with 
all its apparatus is really intended for the solution of these problems, is called 
Metaphysic. Its procedure is at first dogmatic, i.e. unchecked by a previous 
examination of what reason can and cannot do, before it engages confidently 
in so arduous an undertaking.' 



4 Introduction 

avoided if only we are cautious in our imaginations, 
which nevertheless remain what they are, imaginations 
only. How far we can advance independent of all ex- 
perience in a priori knowledge is shown by the brilliant 
example of mathematics. It is true they deal with objects 
and knowledge so far only as they can be represented 
in intuition. But this is easily overlooked, because that 
intuition itself may be given a priori, and be difficult to 
distinguish from a pure concept. Thus inspirited [p. 5] 
by a splendid proof of the power of reason, the desire of 
enlarging our know ledge sees no limits. The light dove, 
piercing in her easy Might the air and perceiving its resist- 
ance, imagines that flight would be easier still in empty 
space. It was thus that Plato left the world of sense, as 
opposing so many hindrances to our understanding, and 
ventured beyond on the wings of his ideas into the empty 
space of pure understanding. He did not perceive that 
he was making no progress by these endeavours, because 
he had no resistance as a fulcrum on which to rest or 
to apply his powers, in order to cause the understand- 
ing to advance. It is indeed a very common fate of 
human reason first of all to finish its speculative edifice 
as soon as possible, and then only to enquire whether the 
foundation be sure. Then all sorts of excuses are made 
in order to assure us as to its solidity, or to decline alto- 
gether such a late and dangerous enquiry. The reason 
why during the time of building we feel free from all 
anxiety and suspicion and believe in the apparent solidity 
of our foundation, is this: — A great, perhaps the greatest 
portion of what our reason finds to do consists in the 
analysis of our concepts of objects. This gives us a 
great deal of knowledge which, though it consists in no 



Introduction 5 

more than in simplifications and explanations of [p. 6] 
what is comprehended in our concepts (though in a con- 
fused manner), is yet considered as equal, at least in 
form, to new knowledge. It only separates and arranges 
our concepts, it does not enlarge them in matter or con- 
tents. As by this process we gain a kind of real know- 
ledge a priori, which progresses safely and usefully, it 
happens that our reason, without being aware of it, ap- 
propriates under that pretence propositions of a totally 
different character, adding to given concepts new and 
strange ones a priori, without knowing whence they 
come, nay without even thinking of such a question. I 
shall therefore at the very outset treat of the distinction 
between these two kinds of knowledge. 

Of the Distmction between Analytical and Synthetical 
Judgments 

In all judgments in which there is a relation between 
subject and predicate (I speak of affirmative judgments 
only, the application to negative ones being easy), that 
relation can be of two kinds. Either the predicate B 
belongs to the subject A as something contained (though 
covertly) in the concept A ; or B lies outside the sphere 
of the concept A, though somehow connected with it. In 
the former case I call the judgment analytical, in the 
latter synthetical. Analytical judgments (affirmative) are 
therefore those in which the connection of the [p. 7] 
predicate with the subject is conceived through identity, 
while others in which that connection is conceived without 
identity, may be called synthetical. The former might be 
called illustrating, the latter expanding judgments, because 
in the former nothing is added by the predicate to the 



6 Introduction 

concept of the subject, but the concept is only divided into 
its constituent concepts which were always conceived as 
existing within it, though confusedly ; while the latter add 
to the concept of the subject a predicate not conceived as 
existing within it, and not to be extracted from it by any 
process of mere analysis. If I say, for instance, All 
bodies arc extended, this is an analytical judgment. I 
need not go beyond the concept connected with the name 
of body, in order to find that extension is connected with it. 
I have only to analyse that concept and become conscious 
of the manifold elements always contained in it, in order 
to find that predicate. This is therefore an analytical judg- 
ment. But if I say, All bodies are heavy, the predicate is 
something quite different from what I think as the mere 
concept of body. The addition of such a predicate gives 
us a synthetical judgment. 
[It becomes clear from this, 1 

[i. That our knowledge is in no way extended by 
analytical judgments, but that all they effect is [p. 8] 
to put the concepts which we possess into better order and 
render them more intelligible. 

2. That in synthetical judgments I must have besides 
the concept of the subject something else (x) on which 
the understanding relies in order to know that a predicate, 
not contained in the concept, nevertheless belongs to it. 

In empirical judgments this causes no difficulty, because 
this x is here simply the complete experience of an object 
which I conceive by the concept A, that concept forming 
one part only of my experience. For though I do not in- 
clude the predicate of gravity in the general concept of 

1 These two paragraphs to ' In synthetical judgments a priori, however,' 
are left out in the Second Edition, and replaced by Supplement V, 



Introduction 7 

body, that concept nevertheless indicates the complete 
experience through one of its parts, so that I may add 
other parts also of the same experience, all belonging to 
that concept. I may first, by an analytical process, realise 
the concept of body through the predicates of extension, 
impermeability, form, etc., all of which are contained in it. 
Afterwards I expand my knowledge, and looking back to 
the experience from which my concept of body was ab- 
stracted, I find gravity always connected with the before- 
mentioned predicates. Experience therefore is the x 
which lies beyond the concept A, and on which rests 
the possibility of a synthesis of the predicate of gravity B 
with the concept A.] 

In synthetical judgments a priori, however, that [p. 9] 
help is entirely wanting. If I want to go beyond the con- 
cept A in order to find another concept B connected with 
it, where is there anything on which I may rest and 
through which a synthesis might become possible, con- 
sidering that I cannot have the advantage of looking 
about in the field of experience ? Take the proposition 
that all which happens has its cause. In the concept of 
something that happens I no doubt conceive of something 
existing preceded by time, and from this certain analytical 
judgments may be deduced. But the concept of cause is 
entirely outside that concept, and indicates something 
different from that which happens, and is by no means 
contained in that representation. How can I venture then 
to predicate of that which happens something totally 
different from it, and to represent the concept of cause, 
though not contained in it, as belonging to it, and belong- 
ing to it by necessity ? What is here the unknown x, on 
which the understanding may rest in order to find beyond 



8 Introduction 

the concept A a foreign predicate B, which nevertheless 
is believed to be connected with it? It cannot be ex- 
perience, because the proposition that all which happens 
has its cause represents this second predicate as added to 
the subject not only with greater generality than experience 
can ever supply, but also with a character of necessity, and 
therefore purely a priori, and based on concepts. All 
our speculative knowledge a priori aims at and rests on 
such synthetical, i.e. expanding propositions, for [p. 10] 
the analytical are no doubt very important and necessary, 
yet only in order to arrive at that clearness of concepts 
which is requisite for a safe and wide synthesis, serving 
as a really new addition to what we possess already. 

[We 1 have here a certain mystery 2 before us, which 
must be cleared up before any advance into the unlimited 
field of a pure knowledge of the understanding can become 
safe and trustworthy. We must discover on the largest 
scale the ground of the possibility of synthetical judgments 
a priori ; we must understand the conditions which render 
every class of them possible, and endeavour not only to 
indicate in a sketchy outline, but to define in its fulness 
and practical completeness, the whole of that knowledge, 
which forms a class by itself, systematically arranged 
according to its original sources, its divisions, its extent 
and its limits. So much for the present with regard to 
the peculiar character of synthetical judgments.] 

It will now be seen how there can be a special [p. n] 

1 This paragraph left out in the Second Edition, and replaced by Supple- 
ment VI. 

2 If any of the ancients had ever thought of asking this question, this alone 
would have formed a powerful barrier against all systems of pure reason to 
the present day, and would have saved many vain attempts undertaken blindly 
and without a true knowledge of the subject in hand. 



Introduction 9 

science serving as a critique of pure reason. [Every 
kind of knowledge is called pure, if not mixed with any- 
thing heterogeneous. But more particularly is that know- 
ledge called absolutely pure, which is not mixed up with 
any experience or sensation, and is therefore possible en- 
tirely a priori.] Reason is the faculty which supplies the 
principles of knowledge a priori. Pure reason therefore 
is that faculty which supplies the principles of knowing 
anything entirely a priori. An Organum of pure reason 
ought to comprehend all the principles by which pure 
knowledge a priori can be acquired and fully established. 
A complete application of such an Organum would give 
us a System of Pure Reason. But as that would be a 
difficult task, and as at present it is still doubtful whether 
and when such an expansion of our knowledge is here 
possible, we may look on a mere criticism of pure reason, 
its sources and limits, as a kind of preparation for a com- 
plete system of pure reason. It should be called a critique, 
not a doctrine, of pure reason. Its usefulness would be 
negative only, serving for a purging rather than for an 
expansion of our reason, and, what after all is a consid- 
erable gain, guarding reason against errors. 

I ca ll all knowledge transcendental which is occupied 
not so much with objects, as with our a priori concepts 
of objects. 1 A system of such concepts might be [p. 12] 
called Transcendental Philosophy. But for the present 
this is again too great an undertaking. We should have 
to treat therein completely both of analytical knowledge, 
and of synthetical knowledge a priori, which is more than 
we intend to do, being satisfied to carry on the analysis so 

1 ' As with our manner of knowing objects, so far as this is meant to be 
possible a priori? Second Edition. 



10 Introduction 

far only as is indispensably necessary in order to recognise 
in their whole extent the principles of synthesis a priori, 
which alone concern us. This investigation which should 
be called a transcendental critique, but not a systematic 
doctrine, is all we are occupied with at present. It is 
not meant to extend our knowledge, but only to rectify 
it, and to become the test of the value of all a priori 
knowledge. Such a critique therefore is a preparation for 
a New Organum, or, if that should not be possible, for a 
Canon at least, according to which hereafter a complete 
system of a philosophy of pure reason, whether it serve 
for an expansion or merely for a limitation of it, may be 
carried out, both analytically and synthetically. That 
such a system is possible, nay that it need not be so com- 
prehensive as to prevent the hope of its completion, may 
be gathered from the fact that it would have to deal, not 
with the nature of things, which is endless, but with the 
understanding which judges of the nature of [p. 13] 
things, and this again so far only as its knowledge a 
priori is concerned. Whatever the understanding pos- 
sesses a priori, as it has not to be looked for without, can 
hardly escape our notice, nor is there any reason to 
suppose that it will prove too extensive for a complete 
inventory, and for such a valuation as shall assign to it its 
true merits or demerits. 1 

II 

DIVISION OF TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY 

Transcendental Philosophy is with us an idea (of a 
science) only, for which the critique of pure reason should 

1 Here follows Supplement VII in Second Edition. 



Introduction 1 1 

trace, according to fixed principles, an architectonic plan, 
guaranteeing the completeness and certainty of all parts 
of which the building consists. (It is a system of all 
principles of pure reason.) 1 The reason why we do not 
call such a critique a transcendental philosophy in itself 
is simply this, that in order to be a complete system, it 
ought to contain likewise a complete analysis of the whole 
of human knowledge a priori. It is true that our critique 
must produce a complete list of all the fundamental con- 
cepts which constitute pure knowledge. But it need not 
give a detailed analysis of these concepts, nor a complete 
list of all derivative concepts. Such an analysis would 
be out of place, because it is not -beset with the [p. 14] 
doubts and difficulties which are inherent in synthesis, 
and which alone necessitate a critique of pure reason. 
Nor would it answer our purpose to take the responsi- 
bility of the completeness of such an analysis and deriva- 
tion. This completeness of analysis, however, and of 
derivation from such a priori concepts as we shall have 
to deal with presently, may easily be supplied, if only 
they have first been laid down as perfect principles of 
synthesis, and nothing is wanting to them in that respect. 

All that constitutes transcendental philosophy belongs 
to the critique of pure reason, nay it is the complete idea 
of transcendental philosophy, but not yet the whole of 
that philosophy itself, because it carries the analysis so 
far only as is requisite for a complete examination of 
synthetical knowledge a priori. 

The most important consideration in the arrangement 
of such a science is that no concepts should be admitted 

1 Addition in the Second Edition. 



1 2 Introduction 

which contain anything empirical, and that the a priori 
knowledge shall be perfectly pure. Therefore, although 
the highest principles of morality and their fundamental 
concepts are a priori knowledge, they do not [p. 15] 
belong to transcendental philosophy, because the con- 
cepts of pleasure and pain, desire, inclination, free-will, 
etc., which are all of empirical origin, must here be pre- 
supposed. Transcendental philosophy is the wisdom of 
pure speculative reason. Everything practical, so far as 
it contains motives, has reference to sentiments, and these 
belong to empirical sources of knowledge. 

If we wish to carry out a proper division of our science 
systematically, it must contain first a doctrine of the ele- 
ments, secondly, a doctrine of the method of pure reason. 
Each of these principal divisions will have its subdivisions, 
the grounds of which cannot however be explained here. 
So much only seems necessary for previous information, 
that there are two stems of human knowledge, which per- 
haps may spring from a common root, unknown to us, viz. 
sensibility and the understanding, objects being given by 
the former and thought by the latter. If our sensibility 
should contain a priori representations, constituting con- 
ditions under which alone objects can be given, it would 
belong to transcendental philosophy, and the doctrine of 
this transcendental sense-perception would neces- [p. 16] 
sarily form the first part of the doctrine of elements, be- 
cause the conditions under which alone objects of human 
knowledge can be given must precede those under which 
they are thought. 



CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 



THE ELEMENTS OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 



THE 

ELEMENTS OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 

[p- 19] 

FIRST PART 

TRANSCENDENTAL .ESTHETIC 

Whatever the process and the means may be by 
which knowledge reaches its objects, there is one that 
reaches them directly, and forms the ultimate material 
of all thought, viz. intuition (Anschauung). This is pos- 
sible only when the object is given, and the object can 
be given only (to human beings at least) through a cer- 
tain affection of the mind (Gemiith). 

This faculty (receptivity) of receiving representations 
(Vorstellungen), according to the manner in which we are 
affected by objects, is called sensibility (Sinnlichkeit). 

Objects therefore are given to us through our sensi- 
bility. Sensibility alone supplies us with intuitions (An- 
schauungen). These intuitions become thought through 
the understanding (Verstand), and hence arise conceptions 
(Begriffe). All thought therefore must, directly or indi- 
rectly, go back to intuitions (Anschauungen), i.e. to our 
sensibility, because in no other way can objects be given 
to us. 

15 



1 6 Transcendental ALsthctic 

The effect produced by an object upon the faculty of 
representation (Vorstellungsfahigkeit), so far as we [p. 20] 
are affected by it, is called sensation (Empfindung). An 
intuition (Anschauung) of an object, by means of sensa- 
tion, is called empirical. The undefined object of such an 
empirical intuition is called phenomenon (Erscheinung). 

In a phenomenon I call that which corresponds to the 
sensation its matter; but that which causes the manifold 
matter of the phenomenon to be perceived as arranged 
in a certain order, I call its form. 

Now it is clear that it cannot be sensation again 
through which sensations arc arranged and placed in 
certain forms. The matter only of all phenomena is 
given us a posteriori ; but their form must be ready for 
them in the mind (Gemtith) a priori, and must therefore 
be capable of being considered as separate from all sen- 
sations. 

I call all representations in which there is nothing that 
belongs to sensation, pure (in a transcendental sense). 
The pure form therefore of all sensuous intuitions, that 
form in which the manifold elements of the phenomena 
are seen in a certain order, must be found in the mind 
a priori. And this pure form of sensibility may be called 
the pure intuition (Anschauung). 

Thus, if we deduct from the representation (Vorstel- 
lung) of a body what belongs to the thinking of the 
understanding, viz. substance, force, divisibility, etc., and 
likewise what belongs to sensation, viz. impermeability, 
hardness, colour, etc., there still remains some- [p. 21] 
thing of that empirical intuition (Anschauung), viz. exten- 
sion and form. These belong to pure intuition, which a 
priori, and even without a real object of the senses or of 



Transcendental ^Esthetic ly 

sensation, exists in the mind as a mere form of sensi- 
bility. 

The science of all the principles of sensibility a priori 
I call Transcendental ^Esthetic. 1 There must be such 
a science, forming the first part of the Elements of 
Transcendentalism, as opposed to that which treats of 
the principles of pure thought, and which should be 
called Transcendental Logic. 

In Transcendental ^Esthetic therefore we shall [p. 22] 
first isolate sensibility, by separating everything which the 
understanding adds by means of its concepts, so that 
nothing remains but empirical intuition (Anschauung). 

Secondly, we shall separate from this all that belongs to 
sensation (Empfindung), so that nothing remains but pure 
intuition (reine Anschauung) or the mere form of the 
phenomena, which is the only thing which sensibility a 
priori can supply. In the course of this investigation it 
will appear that there are, as principles of a priori know- 
ledge, two pure forms of sensuous intuition (Anschauung), 
namely, Space and Time. We now proceed to consider 
these more in detail. 

1 The Germans are the only people who at present (i 781) use the word 
cesthetic for what others call criticism of taste. There is implied in that name 
a false hope, first conceived by the excellent analytical philosopher, Baum- 
garten, of bringing the critical judgment of the beautiful under rational prin- 
ciples, and to raise its rules to the rank of a science. But such endeavours 
are vain. For such rules or criteria are, according to their principal sources, 
empirical only, and can never serve as definite a priori rules for our judgment 
in matters of taste; on the contrary, our judgment is the real test of the truth 
of such rules. It would be advisable therefore to drop the name in that sense, 
and to apply it to a doctrine which is a real science, thus approaching more 
nearly to the language and meaning of the ancients with whom the division 
into aiad-qTa /ecu vorfrd was very famous (or to share that name in common 
with speculative philosophy, and thus to use aesthetic sometimes in a transcen- 
dental, sometimes in a psychological sense). 
C 



1 8 Of Space 

First Section of the Transcendental ^Esthetic 
Of Space 

By means of our external sense, a property of our mind 
(Gemiith), we represent to ourselves objects as external or 
outside ourselves, and all of these in space. It is within 
space that their form, size, and relative position are fixed 
or can be fixed. The internal sense by means of which 
the mind perceives itself or its internal state, does not 
give an intuition (Anschauung) of the soul (Seele) itself, 
as an object, but it is nevertheless a fixed form under 
which alone an intuition of its interrial state is [p. 23] 
possible, so that whatever belongs to its internal determi- 
nations (Bestimmungen) must be represented in relations of 
time. Time cannot be perceived (angeschaut) externally, 
as little as space can be perceived as something within us. 

What then are space and time ? Are they real beings ? 
Or, if not that, are they determinations or relations of 
things, but such as would belong to them even if they 
were not perceived? Or lastly, are they determinations 
and relations which are inherent in the form of intuition 
only, and therefore in the subjective nature of our mind, 
without which such predicates as space and time would 
never be ascribed to anything? 

In order to understand this more clearly, let us first con- 
sider space. 

1. Space is not an empirical concept which has been 
derived from external experience. For in order that cer- 
tain sensations should be referred to something outside 
myself, i.e. to something in a different part of space from 
that where I am ; again, in order that I may be able to 



Of Space 19 

represent- them (vorstellen) as side by side, that is, not 
only as different, but as in different places, the representa- 
tion (Vorstellung) of space must already be there. There- 
fore the representation of space cannot be borrowed 
through experience from relations of external phenomena, 
but, on the contrary, this external experience becomes 
possible only by means of the representation of space. 

2. Space is a necessary representation a priori, form- 
ing the very foundation of all external intuitions, [p. 24] 
It is impossible to imagine that there should be no space, 
though one might very well imagine that there should 
be space without objects to fill it. Space is therefore 
regarded as a condition of the possibility of phenomena, 
not as a determination produced by them ; it is a repre- 
sentation a priori which necessarily precedes all external 
phenomena. 

[3. On this necessity of an a priori representation of 
space rests the apodictic certainty of all geometrical prin- 
ciples, and the possibility of their construction a priori. 
For if the intuition of space were a concept gained a 
posteriori, borrowed from general external experience, the 
first principles of mathematical definition would be noth- 
ing but perceptions. They would be exposed to all the 
accidents of perception, and there being but one straight 
line between two points would not be a necessity, but 
only something taught in each case by experience. What- 
ever is derived from experience possesses a relative 
generality only, based on induction. We should there- 
fore not be able to say more than that, so far as hitherto 
observed, no space has yet been found having more than 
three dimensions.] 

4. Space is not a discursive or so-called general [p. 25] 



20 Of Space 

concept of the relations of things in general, but a pure 
intuition. For, first of all, we can imagine one space only, 
and if we speak of many spaces, we mean parts only 
of one and the same space. Nor can these parts be 
considered as antecedent to the one and all-embracing 
space and, as it were, its component parts out of which 
an aggregate is formed, but they can be thought of as 
existing within it only. Space is essentially one ; its 
multiplicity, and therefore the general concept of spaces 
in general, arises entirely from limitations. Hence it 
follows that, with respect to space, an intuition a priori, 
which is not empirical, must form the foundation of all 
conceptions of space. In the same manner all geomet- 
rical principles, e.g. 'that in every triangle two sides 
together are greater than the third,' are never to be 
derived from the general concepts of side and triangle, 
but from an intuition, and that a priori, with apodictic 
certainty. 

[5. Space is represented as an infinite quantity. Now 
a general concept of space, which is found in a foot as 
well as in an ell, could tell us nothing in respect to the 
quantity of the space. If there were not infinity in the 
progression of intuition, no concept of relations of space 
could ever contain a principle of infinity. 1 ] 

Conclusions from the Foregoing Concepts [p. 26] 

a. Space does not represent any quality of objects by 
themselves, or objects in their relation to one another; i.e. 
space does not represent any determination which is 
inherent in the objects themselves, and would remain, 

1 No. 5 (No. 4) is differently worded in the Second Edition; see Supple- 
ment VIII. 



Of Space 21 

even if all subjective conditions of intuition were removed. 
For no determinations of objects, whether belonging to 
them absolutely or in relation to others, can enter into our 
intuition before the actual existence of the objects them- 
selves, that is to say, they can never be intuitions a priori. 

b. Space is nothing but the form of all phenomena of 
the external senses; it is the subjective condition of our 
sensibility, without which no external intuition is possible 
for us. If then we consider that the receptivity of the 
subject, its capacity of being affected by objects, must 
necessarily precede all intuition of objects, we shall under- 
stand how the form of all phenomena may be given before 
all real perceptions, may be, in fact, a priori in the soul, 
and may, as a pure intuition, by which all objects must 
be determined, contain, prior to all experience, principles 
regulating their relations. 

It is therefore from the human standpoint only that we 
can speak of space, extended objects, etc. If we drop 
the subjective condition under which alone we can gain 
external intuition, that is, so far as we ourselves may be 
affected by objects, the representation of space means 
nothing. For this predicate is applied to objects only in 
so far as they appear to us, and are objects of our [p. 27] 
senses. The constant form of this receptivity, which we 
call sensibility, is a necessary condition of all relations in 
which objects, as without us, can be perceived ; and, when 
abstraction is made of these objects, what remains is that 
pure intuition which we call space. As the peculiar con- 
ditions of our sensibility cannot be looked upon as condi- 
tions of the possibility of the objects themselves, but only 
of their appearance as phenomena to us, we may say 
indeed that space comprehends all things which may 



22 Of Space 

appear to us externally, but not all things by themselves, 
whether perceived by us or not, or by any subject what- 
soever. We cannot judge whether the intuitions of other 
thinking beings are subject to the same conditions which 
determine our intuition, and which for us are generally 
binding. If we add the limitation of a judgment to a 
subjective concept, the judgment gains absolute validity. 
The proposition 'all things are beside each other in space,' 
is valid only under the limitation that things are taken as 
objects of our sensuous intuition (Anschauung). If I add 
that limitation to the concept and say 'all things, as exter- 
nal phenomena, are beside each other in space,' the rule 
obtains universal and unlimited validity. Our discussions 
teach therefore the reality, i.e. the objective validity, of 
space with regard to all that can come to us exter- [p. 28] 
nally as an object, but likewise the ideality of space with 
regard to things, when they are considered in themselves 
by our reason, and independent of the nature of our 
senses. We maintain the empirical reality of space, so 
far as every possible external experience is concerned, but 
at the same time its transcendental ideality ; that is to 
say, we maintain that space is nothing, if we leave out of 
consideration the condition of a possible experience, and 
accept it as something on which things by themselves 
are in any way dependent. 

With the exception of space there is no other subjective 
representation (Vorstelluhg) referring to something exter- 
nal, that would be called a priori objective. [This J sub- 
jective condition of all external phenomena cannot there- 
fore be compared to any other. The taste of wine does 

1 This passage to ' my object in what I have said ' is differently worded in 
the Second Edition; see Supplement IX. 



Of Space 23 

not belong to the objective determinations of wine, con- 
sidered as an object, even as a phenomenal object, but to 
the peculiar nature of the sense belonging to the subject 
that tastes the wine. Colours are not qualities of a body, 
though inherent in its intuition, but they are likewise mod- 
ifications only of the sense of sight, as it is affected in dif- 
ferent ways by light. Space, on the contrary, as the very 
condition of external objects, is essential to their appear- 
ance or intuition. Taste and colour are by no means 
necessary conditions under which alone things [p. 29] 
can become to us objects of sensuous perception. They 
are connected with their appearance, as accidentally added 
effects only of our peculiar organisation. They are not 
therefore representations a priori, but are dependent on 
sensation (Empfindung), nay taste even on an affection 
(Gefiihl) of pleasure and pain, which is the result of a 
sensation. No one can have a priori, an idea (Vorstellung) 
either of colour or of taste, but space refers to the pure 
form of intuition only, and involves no kind of sensation, 
nothing empirical ; nay all kinds and determinations of 
space can and must be represented a priori, if concepts 
of forms and their relations are to arise. Through it alone 
is it possible that things should become external objects to 
us.] 

My object in what I have said just now is only to pre- 
vent people from imagining that they can elucidate the 
ideality of space by illustrations which are altogether 
insufficient, such as colour, taste, etc., which should never 
be considered as qualities of things, but as modifications 
of the subject, and which therefore may be different with 
different people. For in this case that which originally is 
itself a phenomenon only, as for instance, a rose, is taken 



24 Of Time 

by the empirical understanding for a thing by itself, which 
nevertheless, with regard to colour, may appear [p. 30] 
different to every eye. The transcendental conception, on 
the contrary, of all phenomena in space, is a critical warn- 
ing that nothing which is seen in space is a thing by itself, 
nor space a form of things supposed to belong to them by 
themselves, but that objects by themselves are not known 
to us at all, and that what we call external objects are 
nothing but representations of our senses, the form of 
which is space, and the true correlative of which, that is 
the thing by itself, is not known, nor can be known by 
these representations, nor do we care to know anything 
about it in our daily experience. 

Second Section of the Transcendental vEsthetic 
Of Time 

I. Time is not an empirical concept deduced from any 
experience, for neither coexistence nor succession would 
enter into our perception, if the representation of time 
were not given a priori. Only when this representation 
a priori is given, can we imagine that certain things happen 
at the same time (simultaneously) or at different times 
(successively). [p. 31] 

II. Time is a necessary representation on which all 
intuitions depend. We cannot take away time from 
phenomena in general, though we can well take away 
phenomena out of time. Time therefore is given a priori. 
In time alone is reality, of phenomena possible. All 

1 In the Second Edition the title is, Metaphysical exposition of the concept 
of time, with reference to par. 5, Transcendental exposition of the concept of 
time. 



Of Time 25 

phenomena may vanish, but time itself (as the general 
condition of their possibility) cannot be done away with. 

III. On this a priori necessity depends also the possi- 
bility of apodictic principles of the relations of time, or of 
axioms of time in general. 'Time has one dimension only ; 
different times are not simultaneous, but successive, while 
different spaces are never successive, but simultaneous. 
Such principles cannot be derived from experience, 
because experience could not impart to them absolute 
universality nor apodictic certainty. We should only be 
able to say that common experience teaches us that it is 
so, but not that it must be so. These principles are valid 
as rules under which alone experience is possible ; they 
teach us before experience, not by means of experience. 1 

IV. Time is not a discursive, or what is called a general 
concept, but a pure form of sensuous intuition. Different 
times are parts only of one and the same time. Repre- 
sentation, which can be produced by a single [p. 32] 
object only, is called an intuition. The proposition that 
different times cannot exist at the same time cannot be 
deduced from any general concept. Such a proposition is 
synthetical, and cannot be deduced from concepts only. 
It is contained immediately in the intuition and representa- 
tion of time. 

V. To say that time is infinite means no more than that 
every definite quantity of time is possible only by limita- 
tions of one time which forms the foundation of all times. 
The original representation of time must therefore be 

1 I retain the reading of the First Edition, vor derselben, nicht durch dieselbe. 
Von denselben, the reading of later editions, is wrong; the emendation of 
Rosenkranz, vor denselben, nicht durch dieselben, unnecessary. The Second 
Edition has likewise vor derselben. 



26 Of Time 

given as unlimited. But when the parts themselves and 
every quantity of an object can be represented as deter- 
mined by limitation only, the whole representation cannot 
be given by concepts (for in that case the partial repre- 
sentations come first), but it must be founded on immediate 
intuition. 1 

Conclusions from the foregoing concepts 

a. Time is not something existing by itself, or inherent 
in things as an objective determination of them, something 
therefore that might remain when abstraction is made of 
all subjective conditions of intuition. For in the former 
case it would be something real, without being a real 
object. In the latter it could not, as a deter- [p. 33] 
mination or order inherent in things themselves, be antece- 
dent to things as their condition, and be known and per- 
ceived by means of synthetical propositions a priori. All 
this is perfectly possible if time is nothing but a subjec- 
tive condition under which alone 2 intuitions take place 
within us. For in that case this form of internal intui- 
tion can be represented prior to the objects themselves, 
that is, a priori. 

b. Time is nothing but the form of the internal sense, 
that is, of our intuition of ourselves, and of our internal 
state. Time cannot be a determination peculiar to exter- 
nal phenomena. It refers neither to their shape, nor 
their position, etc., it only determines the relation of rep- 
resentations in our internal state. And exactly because 
this internal intuition supplies no shape, we try to make 
good this deficiency by means of analogies, and represent 

1 Here follows in the Second Edition, Supplement X. 

2 Read allein instead of alle. 



Of Time 27 

to ourselves the succession of time by a line progressing 
to infinity, in which the manifold constitutes a series of one 
dimension only; and we conclude from the properties of 
this line as to all the properties of time, with one excep- 
tion, i.e. that the parts of the former are simultaneous, 
those of the latter successive. From this it becomes 
clear also, that the representation of time is itself an 
intuition, because all its relations can be expressed by 
means of an external intuition. 

c. Time is the formal condition, a priori, of all phenom- 
ena whatsoever. Space, as the pure form of all [p. 34] 
external intuition, is a condition, a priori, of external phe- 
nomena only. But, as all representations, whether they 
have for their objects external things or not, belong by 
themselves, as determinations of the mind, to our inner 
state, and as this inner state falls under the formal con- 
ditions of internal intuition, and therefore of time, time 
is a condition, a priori, of all phenomena whatsoever, 
and is so directly as a condition of internal phenomena 
(of our mind) and thereby indirectly of external phenom- 
ena also. If I am able to say, a priori, that all external 
phenomena are in space, and are determined, a priori, 
according to the relations of space, I can, according to 
the principle of the internal sense, make the general 
assertion that all phenomena, that is, all objects of the 
senses, are in time, and stand necessarily in relations of 
time. 

If we drop our manner of looking at ourselves inter- 
nally, and of comprehending by means of that intuition 
all external intuitions also within our power of represen- 
tation, and thus take objects as they may be by them- 
selves, then time is nothing. Time has objective validity 



28 Of Time 

with reference to phenomena only, because these are 
themselves things which we accept as objects of our 
senses; but time is no longer objective, if we [p. 35] 
remove the sensuous character of our intuitions, that is 
to say, that mode of representation which is peculiar to 
ourselves, and speak of things in general. Time is there- 
fore simply a subjective condition of our (human) intui- 
tion (which is always sensuous, that is so far as we are 
affected by objects), but by itself, apart from the subject, 
nothing. Nevertheless, with respect to all phenomena, 
that is, all things which can come within our experience, 
time is necessarily objective. We cannot say that all 
things are in time, because, if we speak of things in gen- 
eral, nothing is said about the manner of intuition, which 
is the real condition under which time enters into our rep- 
resentation of things. If therefore this condition is added 
to the concept, and if we say that all things as phenomena 
(as objects of sensuous intuition) are in time, then such 
a proposition has its full objective validity and a priori 
universality. 

What we insist on therefore is the empirical reality of 
time, that is, its objective validity, with reference to all 
objects which can ever come before our senses. And as 
our intuition must at all times be sensuous, no object can 
ever fall under our experience that does not come under 
the conditions of time. What we deny is, that time has 
any claim on absolute reality, so that, without [p. 36] 
taking into account the form of our sensuous condition, it 
should by itself be a condition or quality inherent in 
things ; for such qualities which belong to things by 
themselves can never be given to us through the senses. 
This is what constitutes the transcendental ideality of 



Of Time 29 

time, so that, if we take no account of the subjective con- 
ditions of our sensuous intuitions, time is nothing, and can- 
not be added to the objects by themselves (without their 
relation to our intuition) whether as subsisting or inherent. 
This ideality of time, however, as well as that of space, 
should not be confounded with the deceptions of our sen- 
sations, because in their case we always suppose that the 
phenomenon to which such predicates belong has objective 
reality, which is not at all the case here, except so far as 
this objective reality is purely empirical, that is, so far as 
the object itself is looked upon as a mere phenomenon. 
On this subject see a previous note, in section i, on Space. 

Explanation 

Against this theory which claims empirical, but denies 
absolute and transcendental reality to time, even intelli- 
gent men have protested so unanimously, that I suppose 
that every reader who is unaccustomed to these consider- 
ations may naturally be of the same opinion. What they 
object to is this : Changes, they say, are real (this is proved 
by the change of our own representations, even [p. 37] 
if all external phenomena and their changes be denied). 
Changes, however, are possible in time only, and there- 
fore time must be something real. The answer is easy 
enough. I grant the whole argument. Time certainly 
is something real, namely, the real form of our internal 
intuition. Time therefore has subjective reality with 
regard to internal experience : that is, I really have the 
representation of time and of my determinations in it. 
Time therefore is to be considered as real, not so far as it 
is an object, but so far as it is the representation of myself 
as an object. If either I myself or any other being could 



30 Of Time 

see me without this condition of sensibility, then these 
self-same determinations which we now represent to our- 
selves as changes, would give us a kind of knowledge in 
which the representation of time, and therefore of change 
also, would have no place. There remains therefore the 
empirical reality of time only, as the condition of all our 
experience, while absolute reality cannot, according to 
what has just been shown, be conceded to it. Time is 
nothing but the form of our own internal intuition. 1 Take 
away the peculiar condition of our sensibility, and the idea 
of time vanishes, because it is not inherent in the ob- 
jects, but in the subject only that perceives them. [p. 38] 
The reason why this objection is raised so unanimously, 
and even by those who have nothing very tangible to say 
against the doctrine of the ideality of space, is this. They 
could never hope to prove apodictically the absolute real- 
ity of space, because they are confronted by idealism, 
which has shown that the reality of external objects does 
not admit of strict proof, while the reality of the object of 
our internal perceptions (the perception of my own self 
and of my own status) is clear immediately through our 
consciousness. The former might be merely phenomenal, 
but the latter, according to their opinion, is undeniably 
something real. They did not see that both, without 
denying to them their reality as representations, belong 
nevertheless to the phenomenon only, which must always 
have two sides, the one when the object is considered by 
itself (without regard to the manner in which it is per- 

1 I can say indeed that my representations follow one another, but this 
means no more than that we are conscious of them as in a temporal succes- 
sion, that is, according to the form of our own internal sense. Time, therefore, 
is nothing by itself, nor is it a determination inherent objectively in things. 



Of Time 31 

ceived, its quality therefore remaining always problemati- 
cal), the other, when the form of the perception of the 
object is taken into consideration ; this form belonging 
not to the object in itself, but to the subject which per- 
ceives it, though nevertheless belonging really and neces- 
sarily to the object as a phenomenon. 

Time and space are therefore two sources of knowledge 
from which various a priori synthetical cognitions [p. 39] 
can be derived. Of this pure mathematics give a splendid 
example in the case of our cognitions of space and its vari- 
ous relations. As they are both pure forms of sensuous 
intuition, they render synthetical propositions a priori pos- 
sible. But these sources of knowledge a priori (being con- 
ditions of our sensibility only) fix their own limits, in that 
they can refer to objects only in so far as they are consid- 
ered as phenomena, but cannot represent things as they 
are by themselves. That is the only field in which they 
are valid ; beyond it they admit of no objective applica- 
tion. This ideality of space and time, however, leaves the 
truthfulness of our experience quite untouched, because 
we are equally sure of it, whether these forms are inher- 
ent in things by themselves, or by necessity in our intui- 
tion of them only. Those, on the contrary, who maintain 
the absolute reality of space and time, whether as subsist- 
ing or only as inherent, must come into conflict with the 
principles of experience itself. For if they admit space 
and time as subsisting (which is generally the view of 
mathematical students of nature) they have to admit two 
eternal infinite and self-subsisting nonentities (space and 
time), which exist without their being anything real, only 
in order to comprehend all that is real. If they take the 
second view (held by some metaphysical students [p. 40] 



32 Of Time 

of nature), and look upon space and time as relations of phe- 
nomena, simultaneous or successive, abstracted from expe- 
rience, though represented confusedly in their abstracted 
form, they are obliged to deny to mathematical proposi- 
tions a priori their validity with regard to real things (for 
instance in space), or at all events their apodictic cer- 
tainty, which cannot take place a posteriori, while the a 
priori conceptions of space and time are, according to 
their opinion, creations of our imagination only. Their 
source, they hold, must really be looked for in experience, 
imagination framing out of the relations abstracted from 
experience something which contains the general charac- 
ter of these relations, but which cannot exist without the 
restrictions which nature has imposed on them. The 
former gain so much that they keep at least the sphere 
of phenomena free for mathematical propositions ; but, as 
soon as the understanding endeavours to transcend that 
sphere, they become bewildered by these very conditions. 
The latter have this advantage that they are not bewil- 
dered by the representations of space and time when 
they wish to form judgments of objects, not as phenom- 
ena, but only as considered by the understanding; but 
they can neither account for the possibility of mathemati- 
cal knowledge a priori (there being, according to them, 
no true and objectively valid intuition a priori), nor can 
they bring the laws of experience into true harmony with 
the a priori doctrines of mathematics. According to our 
theory of the true character of these original [p. 41] 
forms of sensibility, both difficulties vanish. 

Lastly, that transcendental aesthetic cannot contain 
more than these two elements, namely, space and time, 
becomes clear from the fact that all other concepts belong- 



Of Time 33 

ing to the senses, even that of motion, which combines 
both, presuppose something empirical. Motion presup- 
poses the perception of something moving. In space, 
however, considered by itself, there is nothing that moves. 
Hence that which moves must be something which, as in 
space, can be given by experience only, therefore an empir- 
ical datum. On the same ground, transcendental aesthetic 
cannot count the concept of change among its a priori 
data, because time itself does not change, but only some- 
thing which is in time. For this, the perception of some- 
thing existing and of the succession of its determinations, 
in other words, experience, is required. 



GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON TRANSCEN- 
DENTAL ^ESTHETIC 

In order to avoid all misapprehensions it will be neces- 
sary, first of all, to declare, as clearly as possible, what is 
our view with regard to the fundamental nature of [p. 42] 
sensuous knowledge. 

What we meant to say was this, that all our intuition 
is nothing but the representation of phenomena ; that 
things which we see are not by themselves what we see, 
nor their relations by themselves such as they appear to 
us, so that, if we drop our subject or the subjective form 
of our senses, all qualities, all relations of objects in space 
and time, nay space and time themselves, would vanish. 
They cannot, as phenomena, exist by themselves, but in 
us only. It remains completely unknown to us what 
objects may be by themselves and apart from the recep- 
tivity of our senses. We know nothing but our manner 
of perceiving them, that manner being peculiar to us, and 
not necessarily shared in by every being, though, no doubt, 
by every human being. This is what alone concerns us. 
Space and time are pure forms of our intuition, while 
sensation forms its matter. What we can know a priori — 
before all real intuition, are the forms of space and time, 
which are therefore called pure intuition, while sensation 
is that which causes our knowledge to be called a poste- 
riori knowledge, i.e. empirical intuition. Whatever our 
sensation may be, these forms are necessarily inherent 

34 



Transcendental Aisthetic 35 

in it, while sensations themselves may be of the most 
different character. Even if we could impart the [p. 43] 
highest degree of clearness to our intuition, we should 
not come one step nearer to the nature of objects by 
themselves. We should know our mode of intuition, 
i.e. our sensibility, more completely, but always under 
the indefeasible conditions of space and time. What the 
objects are by themselves would never become known to 
us, even through the clearest knowledge of that which 
alone is given us, the phenomenon. 

It would vitiate the concept of sensibility and phenom- 
ena, and render our whole doctrine useless and empty, if 
we were to accept the view (of Leibniz and Wolf), that 
our whole sensibility is really but a confused representa- 
tion of things, simply containing what belongs to them by 
themselves, though smothered under an accumulation of 
signs (Merkmal) and partial concepts, which we do not 
consciously disentangle. The distinction between con- 
fused and well-ordered representation is logical only, and 
does not touch the contents of our knowledge. Thus the 
concept of Right, as employed by people of common sense, 
contains neither more nor less than the subtlest specula- 
tion can draw out of it, only that in the ordinary practical 
use of the word we are not always conscious of the mani- 
fold ideas contained in that thought. But no one would 
say therefore that the ordinary concept of Right was 
sensuous, containing a mere phenomenon ; for Right can 
never become a phenomenon, being a concept of [p. 44] 
the understanding, and representing a moral quality be- 
longing to actions by themselves. The representation 
of a Body, on the contrary, contains nothing in intuition 
that could belong to an object by itself, but is merely 



36 Transcendental ^Esthetic 

the phenomenal appearance of something, and the man- 
ner in which we are affected by it. This receptivity of 
our knowledge is called sensibility. Even if we could 
see to the very bottom of a phenomenon, it would remain 
for ever altogether different from the knowledge of the 
thing by itself. 

This shows that the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolf 
has given a totally wrong direction to all investigations 
into the nature and origin of our knowledge, by repre- 
senting the difference between the sensible and the intel- 
ligible as logical only. That difference is in truth tran- 
scendental. It affects not the form only, as being more 
or less confused, but the origin and contents of our 
knowledge; so that by our sensibility we know the nat- 
ure of things by themselves not confusedly only, but not 
at all. If we drop our subjective condition, the object, as 
represented with its qualities bestowed on it by sensuous 
intuition, is nowhere to be found, and cannot possibly be 
found ; because its form, as phenomenal appearance, is 
determined by those very subjective conditions. 

It has been the custom to distinguish in phe- [p. 45] 
nomena that which is essentially inherent in their intuition 
and is recognised by every human being, from that which 
belongs to their intuition accidentally only, being valid 
not for sensibility in general, but only for a particular 
position and organisation of this or that sense. In that 
case the former kind of knowledge is said to represent 
the object by itself, the latter its appearance only. But 
that distinction is merely empirical. If, as generally hap- 
pens, people are satisfied with that distinction, without 
again, as they ought, treating the first empirical intuition 
as purely phenomenal also, in which nothing can be found 



Transcendental ^Esthetic 37 

belonging to the thing by itself, our transcendental dis- 
tinction is lost, and we believe that we know things by 
themselves, though in the world. of sense, however far we 
may carry our investigation, we can never have anything 
before us but mere phenomena. To give an illustration. 
People might call the rainbow a mere phenomenal appear- 
ance during a sunny shower, but the rain itself the thing 
by itself. This would be quite right, physically speaking, 
and taking rain as something which, in our ordinary 
experience and under all possible relations to our senses, 
can be determined thus and thus only in our intuition. 
But if we take the empirical in general, and ask, [p. 46] 
without caring whether it is the same with every particu- 
lar observer, whether it represents a thing by itself (not 
the drops of rain, for these are already, as phenomena, 
empirical objects), then the question as to the relation 
between the representation and the object becomes tran- 
scendental, and not only the drops are mere phenomena, 
but even their round shape, nay even the space in which 
they fall, are nothing by themselves, but only modifica- 
tions or fundamental dispositions of our sensuous intuition, 
the transcendental object remaining unknown to us. 

The second important point in our transcendental aes- 
thetic is, that it should not only gain favour as a plausible 
hypothesis, but assume as certain and undoubted a charac- 
ter as can be demanded of any theory which is to serve 
as an organum. In order to make this certainty self- 
evident we shall select a case which will make its validity 
palpable. 

Let us suppose that space and time are in themselves 
objective, and conditions of the possibility of things by 
themselves. Now there is with' regard to both a large 



38 Transcendental Aisthetic 

number of a priori apodictic and synthetical propositions, 
and particularly with regard to space, which for this rea- 
son we shall chiefly investigate here as an illustration. 
As the propositions of geometry are known synthetically 
a priori, and with apodictic certainty, I ask, whence do 
you take such propositions ? and what does the [p. 47] 
understanding rely on in order to arrive at such absolutely 
necessary and universally valid truths ? There is no other 
way but by concepts and intuitions, and both as given 
either a priori or a posteriori. The latter, namely em- 
pirical concepts, as well as the empirical intuition on 
which they are founded, cannot yield any synthetical 
propositions except such as are themselves also empirical 
only, that is, empirical propositions, which can never 
possess that necessity and absolute universality which are 
characteristic of all geometrical propositions. As to the 
other and only means of arriving at such knowledge 
through mere concepts or intuitions a priori, it must be 
clear that only analytical, but no synthetical knowledge 
can ever be derived from mere concepts. Take the 
proposition that two straight lines cannot enclose a space 
and cannot therefore form a figure, and try to deduce it 
from the concept of straight lines and the number two ; 
or take the proposition that with three straight lines it 
is possible to form a figure, and try to deduce that from 
those concepts. All your labour will be lost, and in the 
end you will be obliged to have recourse to intuition, as 
is always done in geometry. You then give yourselves 
an object in intuition. But of what kind is it? [p. 48] 
Is it a pure intuition a priori or an empirical one ? In 
the latter case, you. would never arrive at a universally 
valid, still less at an apodictic proposition, because ex- 



Transcendental ALsthetic 39 

perience can never yield such. You must therefore take 
the object as given a priori in intuition, and found your 
synthetical proposition on that. If you did not possess 
in yourselves the power of a priori intuition, if that 
subjective condition were not at the same time, as to the 
form, the general condition a prioi-i under which alone 
the object of that (external) intuition becomes possible, 
if, in fact, the object (the triangle) were something by 
itself without any reference to you as the subject, how 
could you say that what exists necessarily in your subjective 
conditions of constructing a triangle, belongs of necessity 
to the triangle itself ? For you could not add something 
entirely new (the figure) to your concepts of three lines, 
something which should of necessity belong to the object, 
as that object is given before your knowledge of it, and 
not by it. If therefore space, and time also, were not 
pure forms of your intuition, which contains the a priori 
conditions under which alone things can become external 
objects to you, while, without that subjective condition, 
they are nothing, you could not predicate anything of 
external objects a priori and synthetically. It is there- 
fore beyond the reach of doubt, and not possible [p. 49] 
only or probable, that space and time, as the necessary 
conditions of all experience, external and internal, are 
purely subjective conditions of our intuition, and that, 
with reference to them, all things are phenomena only, 
and not things thus existing by themselves in such or 
such wise. Hence, so far as their form is concerned, 
much may be predicated of them a priori, but nothing 
whatever of the things by themselves on which these 
phenomena may be grounded. 1 

1 Here follows in the Second Edition, Supplement XL 



THE 

ELEMENTS OE TRANSCENDENTALISM 

[p. 50] 

SECOND PART 

TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC 



INTRODUCTION 

THE IDEA OF A TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC 

I 
Of Logic in General 

Our knowledge springs from two fundamental sources 
of our soul ; the first receives representations (receptivity 
of impressions), the second is the power of knowing an 
object by these representations (spontaneity of concepts). 
By the first an object is given us, by the second the 
object is though^ in relation to that representation which 
is a mere determination of the soul. Intuition therefore 
and concepts constitute the elements of all our knowledge, 
so that neither concepts without an intuition correspond- 
ing to them, nor intuition without concepts can yield any 
real knowledge. 

Both are either pure or empirical. They are empirical 
when sensation, presupposing the actual presence of the 

40 



Transcendental Logic 41 

object, is contained in it. They are pure when no sensa- 
tion is mixed up with the representation. The latter may 
be called the material of sensuous knowledge. Pure intui- 
tion therefore contains the form only by which [p. 51] 
something is seen, and pure conception the form only by 
which an object is thought. Pure intuitions and pure 
concepts only are possible a priori, empirical intuitions 
and empirical concepts a posteriori. 

We call sensibility the receptivity of our soul, or 
its power of receiving representations whenever it is 
in any wise affected, while the understanding, on the 
contrary, is with us the power of producing representa- 
tions, or the spontaneity of knowledge. We are so con- 
stituted that our intuition must always be sensuous, and 
consist of the mode in which we are affected by objects. 
What enables us to think the objects of our sensuous 
intuition is the understanding. Neither of these qualities 
or faculties is preferable to the other. Without sensibility 
objects would not be given to us, without understanding 
they would not be thought by us. Thoughts without con- 
tents are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. 
Therefore it is equally necessary to make our concepts 
sensuous, i.e. to add to them their object in intuition, as 
to make our intuitions intelligible, i.e. to bring them under 
concepts. These two powers or faculties cannot ex- 
change their functions. The understanding cannot see, 
the senses cannot think. By their union only can know- 
ledge be produced. But this is no reason for confounding 
the share which belongs to each in the production of 
knowledge. On the contrary, they should al- [p. 52] 
ways be carefully separated and distinguished, and we 
have therefore divided the science of the rules of sen- 



42 Transcendental Logic 

sibility in general, i.e. aesthetic, from the science of the 
rules of the understanding in general, i.e. logic. 

Logic again can be taken in hand for two objects, 
either as logic of the general or of a particular use of the 
understanding. The former contains all necessary rules 
of thought without which the understanding cannot be 
used at all. It treats of the understanding without any 
regard to the different objects to which it may be directed. 
Logic of the particular use of the understanding contains 
rules how to think correctly on certain classes of objects. 
The former may be called Elementary Logic, the latter the 
Organum of this or that science. The latter is generally 
taught in the schools as a preparation for certain sciences, 
though, according to the real progress of the human 
understanding, it is the latest achievement, which does 
not become possible till the science itself is really made, 
and requires only a few touches for its correction and 
completion. For it is clear that the objects themselves 
must be very well known before it is possible to give rules 
according to which a science of them may be established. 

General logic is either pure or applied. In the [p. 53] 
former no account is taken of any empirical conditions 
under which our understanding acts, i.e. of the influence 
of the senses, the play of imagination, the laws of mem- 
ory, the force of habit, the inclinations, and therefore the 
sources of prejudice also, nor of anything which supplies 
or seems to supply particular kinds of knowledge ; for all 
this applies to the understanding under certain circum- 
stances of its application only, and requires experience 
as a condition of knowledge. General but pure logic has 
to deal with principles a priori only, and is a canon of the 
understanding and of reason, though with reference to its 



Transcendental Logic 43 

formal application only, irrespective of any contents, 
whether empirical or transcendental. General logic is 
called applied, if it refers to the rules of the use of our 
understanding under the subjective empirical conditions 
laid down in psychology. It therefore contains empirical 
principles, yet it is general, because referring to the use 
of the understanding, whatever its objects may be. It 
is neither a canon of the understanding in general nor an 
organum of any particular science, but simply a cathar- 
ticon of the ordinary understanding. 

In general logic, therefore, that part which is to con- 
stitute the science of pure reason must be entirely sepa- 
rated from that which forms applied, but for all [p. 54] 
that still general logic. The former alone is a real 
science, though short and dry, as a practical exposition 
of an elementary science of the understanding ougfyt to 
be. In this logicians should never lose sight of two 
rules : — 

1. As general logic it takes no account of the contents 
of the knowledge of the understanding nor of the differ- 
ence of its objects. It treats of nothing but the mere 
form of thought. 

2. As pure logic it has nothing to do with empirical 
principles, and borrows nothing from psychology (as 
some have imagined) ; psychology, therefore, has no 
influence whatever on the canon of the understanding. 
It proceeds by way of demonstration, and everything in 
it must be completely a priori. 

What I call applied logic (contrary to common usage 
according to which it contains certain exercises on the 
rules of pure logic) is a representation of the understand- 
ing and of the rules according to which it is necessarily 



44 Transcendental Logic 

applied in concreto> i.e. under the accidental conditions 
of the subject, which may hinder or help its application, 
and are all given empirically only. It treats of attention, 
its impediments and their consequences, the sources of 
error, the states of doubt, hesitation, and conviction, etc., 
and general and pure logic stands to it in [p. 55] 
the same relation as pure ethics, which treat only of the 
necessary moral laws of a free will, to applied ethics, 
which consider these laws as under the influence of sen- 
timents, inclinations, and passions to which all human 
beings are more or less subject. This can never con- 
stitute a true and demonstrated science, because, like 
applied logic, it depends on empirical and psychological 
principles. 

II 

Of Transcendental Logic 

General logic, as we saw, takes no account of the con- 
tents of knowledge, i.e. of any relation between it and its 
objects, and considers the logical form only in the relation 
of cognitions to each other, that is, it treats of the form 
of thought in general. But as we found, when treating of 
Transcendental /Esthetic, that there are pure as well as 
empirical intuitions, it is possible that a similar distinction 
might appear between pure and empirical thinking. In 
this case we should have a logic in which the contents 
of knowledge are not entirely ignored, for such a logic 
which should contain the rules of pure thought only, 
would exclude only all knowledge of a merely empirical 
character. It would also treat of the origin of our know- 
ledge of objects, so far as that origin cannot be attributed 



Transcendental Logic 45 

to the objects, while general logic is not at all [p. 56] 
concerned with the origin of our knowledge, but only con- 
siders representations (whether existing originally a priori 
in ourselves or empirically given to us), according to the 
laws followed by the understanding, when thinking and 
treating them in their relation to each other. It is con- 
fined therefore to the form imparted by the understanding 
to the representations, whatever may be their origin. 

And here I make a remark which should never be lost 
sight of, as it extends its influence on all that follows. 
Not every kind of knowledge a priori should be called 
transcendental (i.e. occupied with the possibility or the use 
of knowledge a priori), but that only by which we know 
that and how certain representations (intuitional or con- 
ceptual) can be used or are possible a priori only. Neither 
space nor any a priori geometrical determination of it is a 
transcendental representation ; but that knowledge only is 
rightly called transcendental which teaches us that these 
representations cannot be of empirical origin, and how 
they can yet refer a priori to objects of experience. The 
application of space to objects in general would likewise 
be transcendental, but, if restricted to objects of sense, it 
is empirical. The distinction between transcen- [p. 57] 
dental and empirical belongs therefore to the critique of 
knowledge, and does not affect the relation of that know- 
ledge to its objects. 

On the supposition therefore that there may be con- 
cepts, having an a priori reference to objects, not as pure 
or sensuous intuitions, but as acts of pure thought, being 
concepts in fact, but neither of empirical nor aesthetic 
origin, we form by anticipation an idea of a science of 
that knowledge which belongs to the pure understanding 



46 Transcendental Logic 

and reason, and by which we may think objects entirely 
a prion. Such a science, which has to determine the 
origin, the extent, and the objective validity of such 
knowledge, might be called Transcendental Logic, having 
to deal with the laws of the understanding and reason in 
so far only as they refer a priori to objects, and not, as 
general logic, in so far as they refer promiscuously to the 
empirical as well as to the pure knowledge of reason. 

Ill 

Of the Division of General Logic into Analytic and 
Dialectic 

What is truth ? is an old and famous question by which 
people thought they could drive logicians into a corner, 
and either make them take refuge in a mere circle, 1 or 
make them confess their ignorance and conse- [p. 58 ] 
quently the vanity of their whole art. The nominal defi- 
nition of truth, that it is the agreement of the cognition 
with its object, is granted. What is wanted is to know 
a general and safe criterion of the truth of any and every 
kind of knowledge. 

It is a great and necessary proof of wisdom and sagac- 
ity to know what questions may be reasonably asked. 
For if a question is absurd in itself and calls for an answer 
where there is no answer, it does not only throw disgrace 
on the questioner, but often tempts an uncautious listener 
into absurd answers, thus presenting, as the ancients said, 
the spectacle of one person milking a he-goat, and of 
another holding the sieve. 

If truth consists in the agreement of knowledge with 

1 The First Edition has Diallele, the Second, Dialexe. 



Transceiidental Logic 47 

its object, that object must thereby be distinguished from 
other objects; for knowledge is untrue if it does not agree 
with its object, though it contains something which may 
be affirmed of other objects. A general criterium of truth 
ought really to be valid with regard to every kind of 
knowledge, whatever the objects may be. But it is clear, 
as no account is thus taken of the contents of knowledge 
(relation to its object), while truth concerns these very 
contents, that it is impossible and absurd to ask [p. 59] 
for a sign of the truth of the contents of that knowledge, 
and that therefore a sufficient and at the same time 
general mark of truth cannot possibly be found. As we 
have before called the contents of knowledge its material, 
it will be right to say that of the truth of the knowledge, 
so far as its material is concerned, no general mark can 
be demanded, because it would be self-contradictory. 

But, when we speak of knowledge with reference to its 
form only, without taking account of its contents, it is 
equally clear that logic, as it propounds the general and 
necessary rules of the understanding, must furnish in 
these rules criteria of truth. For whatever contradicts 
those rules is false, because the understanding would thus 
contradict the general rules of thought, that is, itself. 
These criteria, however, refer only to the form of truth 
or of thought in general. They are quite correct so far, 
but they are not sufficient. For although our knowledge 
may be in accordance with logical rule, that is, may not 
contradict itself, it is quite possible that it may be 
in contradiction with its object. Therefore the purely 
logical criterium of truth, namely, the agreement of 
knowledge with the general and formal laws of the 
understanding and reason, is no doubt a conditio sine 



48 Transcendental Logic 

qua non, or a negative condition of all truth, [p. 60] 
Hut logic can go no further, and it has no test for dis- 
covering error with regard to the contents, and not the 
form, of a proposition. 

General logic resolves the whole formal action of the 
understanding and reason into its elements, and exhibits 
them as principles for all Logical criticism of our know- 
ledge. This part of logic may therefore be called Ana- 
lytic, and is at least a negative test of truth, because all 
knowledge must first be examined and estimated, so far 
as its form is concerned, according to these rules, before 
it is itself tested according to its contents, in order to see 
whether it contains positive truth with regard to its 
object. But as the mere form of knowledge, however 
much it may be in agreement with logical laws, is far 
from being sufficient to establish the material or objec- 
tive truth of our knowledge, no one can venture with 
logic alone to judge of objects, or to make any assertion, 
without having first collected, apart from logic, trust- 
worthy information, in order afterwards to attempt its 
application and connection in a coherent whole accord- 
ing to logical laws, or, still better, merely to test it by 
them. However, there is something so tempting in this 
specious art of giving to all our knowledge the form of 
the understanding, though being utterly ignorant [p. 61] 
as to the contents thereof, that general logic, which is 
meant to be a mere canon of criticism, has been employed 
as if it were an organum, for the real production of at 
least the semblance of objective assertions, or, more truly, 
has been misemployed for that purpose. This general 
logic, which assumes the semblance of an organum, is 
called Dialectic. 



Transcendental Logic 49 

Different as are the significations in which the ancients 
used this name of a science or art, it is easy to gather 
from its actual employment that with them it was nothing 
but a logic of semblance. It was a sophistic art of giving 
to one's ignorance, nay, to one's intentional casuistry, the 
outward appearance of truth, by imitating the accurate 
method which logic always requires, and by using its topic 
as a cloak for every empty assertion. Now it may be 
taken as a sure and very useful warning that general 
logic, if treated as an organum, is always an illusive logic, 
that is, dialectical. For as logic teaches nothing with 
regard to the contents of knowledge, but lays down the 
formal conditions only of an agreement with the under- 
standing, which, so far as the objects are concerned, are 
totally indifferent, any attempt at using it as an organum 
in order to extend and enlarge our knowledge, at least in 
appearance, can end in nothing but mere talk, [p. 62] 
by asserting with a certain plausibility anything one likes, 
or, if one likes, denying it. 

Such instruction is quite beneath the dignity of philos- 
ophy. Therefore the title of Dialectic has rather been 
added to logic, as a critique of dialectical semblance ; and 
it is in that sense that we also use it. 

IV 

Of the Division of Transcendental Logic into Transcen- 
dental Analytic and Dialectic 

In transcendental logic we isolate the understanding, as 
before in transcendental aesthetic the sensibility, and fix 
our attention on that part of thought only which has its 
origin entirely in the understanding. The application of 



50 Transcendental Logic 

this pure knowledge has for its condition that objects are 
given in intuition, to which it can be applied, for without 
intuition all our knowledge would be without objects, and 
it would therefore remain entirely empty. That part of 
transcendental logic therefore which teaches the elements 
of the pure knowledge of the understanding, and the prin- 
ciples without which no object can be thought, is transcen- 
dental Analytic, and at the same time a logic of truth. 
No knowledge can contradict it without losing at the 
same time all contents, that is, all relation to any [p. 63] 
object, and therefore all truth. But as it is very tempt- 
ing to use this pure knowledge of the understanding and 
its principles by themselves, and even beyond the limits of 
all experience, which alone can supply the material or the 
objects to which those pure concepts of the understanding 
can be applied, the understanding runs the risk of making, 
through mere sophisms, a material use of the purely for- 
mal principles of the pure understanding, and thus of 
judging indiscriminately of objects which are not given 
to us, nay, perhaps can never be given. As it is properly 
meant to be a mere canon for criticising the empirical use 
of the understanding, it is a real abuse if it is allowed as 
an organum of its general and unlimited application, by 
our venturing, with the pure understanding alone, to judge 
synthetically of objects in general, or to affirm and decide 
anything about them. In this case the employment of the 
pure understanding would become dialectical. 

The second part of transcendental logic must therefore 
form a critique of that dialectical semblance, and is called 
transcendental Dialectic, not as an art of producing dog- 
matically such semblance (an art but too popular with 
many metaphysical jugglers), but as a critique of the 



Transcendental Logic 51 

understanding and reason with regard to their hyper- 
physical employment, in order thus to lay bare the false 
semblance of its groundless pretensions, and to [p. 64] 
reduce its claims to discovery and expansion, which was to 
be achieved by means of transcendental principles only, 
to a mere critique, serving as a protection of the pure 
understanding against all sophistical illusions. 



5- Transcendental Logic 



TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC 

FIRST Division 

Transcendental Analytic 

Transcendental Analytic consists in the dissection of all 
our knowledge a priori into the elements which constitute 
the knowledge of the pure understanding. Four points 

are here essential : first, that the concepts should he pure 
and not empirical ; secondly, that they should not belong- 
to intuition and sensibility, but to thought and understand- 
in- ; thirdly, that the concepts should be elementary and 
carefully distinguished from derivative or composite con- 
cepts; fourthly, that our tables should be complete and 
that they should cover the whole held of the pure under- 
standing. 

This completeness of a science cannot be confidently 
accepted on the strength of a mere estimate, or by means 
of repeated experiments only ; what is required for it is an 
idea of the totality of the a priori knowledge of the under- 
standing, and a classification of the concepts based [p. 65] 
upon it; in fact, a systematic treatment. Pure under- 
standing must be distinguished, not merely from all that 
is empirical, but even from all sensibility. It constitutes 
therefore a unity independent in itself, self-sufficient, and 
not to be increased by any additions from without. The 
sum of its knowledge must constitute a system, compre- 



Transcendental Logic 53 

hended and determined by one idea, and its completeness 
and articulation must form the test of the correctness and 
genuineness of its component parts. 

This part of transcendental logic consists of two books, 
the one containing the concepts, the other the principles of 
pure understanding. 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 



BOOK I 

ANALYTIC OF CONC1 PTS 

By Analytic of concepts I do not understand their 
analysis, or the ordinary process in philosophical dis- 
quisitions of dissecting any given concepts according to 
their contents, and thus rendering them more distinct; 
but a hitherto seldom attempted dissection of the faculty 
of the understanding itself, with the sole object of dis- 
covering the possibility of concepts a priori, by looking 
for them nowhere but in the understanding itself [p. 66] 
as their birthplace, and analysing the pure use of the 
understanding. This is the proper task of a transcen- 
dental philosophy, all the rest is mere logical treatment 
of concepts. We shall therefore follow up the pure con- 
cepts to their first germs and beginnings in the human 
understanding, in which they lie prepared, till at last, on 
the occasion of experience, they become developed, and 
are represented by the same understanding in their full 
purity, freed from all inherent empirical conditions. 



54 









Transcendental Analytic 55 



ANALYTIC OF CONCEPTS 
CHAPTER I 

METHOD OF DISCOVERING ALL PURE CONCEPTS OF THE 
UNDERSTANDING 

When we watch any faculty of knowledge, different 
concepts, characteristic of that faculty, manifest them- 
selves according to different circumstances, which, as 
the observation has been carried on for a longer or 
shorter time, or with more or less accuracy, may be 
gathered up into a more or less complete collection. 
Where this collection will be complete, it is impossible 
to say beforehand, when we follow this almost mechan- 
ical process. Concepts thus discovered fortuitously only, 
possess neither order nor systematic unity, but [p. 67^ 
are paired in the end according to similarities, and, accord- 
ing to their contents, arranged as more or less complex 
in various series, which are nothing less than systematical, 
though to a certain extent put together methodically. 

Transcendental philosophy has the advantage, but 
also the duty of discovering its concepts according to 
a fixed principle. As they spring pure and unmixed 
from the understanding as an absolute unity, they must 
be connected with each other, according to one concept 
or idea. This connection supplies us at the same time 
with a rule, according to which the place of each pure 
concept of the understanding and the systematical com- 



56 Transcendental Analytic 

pleteness of all of them can be determined a priori, in- 
stead of being dependent on arbitrary choice or chance. 

TRANSCENDENTA] METHOD OF THE DISCOVERY 
OF ALL PURE CONCEPTS OF THE UNDER- 
STANDING 

Section I 

Of the Logical Use of the Understanding in General 

We have before defined the understanding negatively 
only, as a non-sensuous faculty of knowledge. As with- 
out sensibility we cannot have any intuition, [p. 68] 
it is clear that the understanding is not a faculty of intui- 
tion. Besides intuition, however, there is no other kind 
oi knowledge except by means of concepts. The know- 
ledge therefore of every understanding, or at least of the 
human understanding, must be by means of concepts, 
not intuitive, but discursive. All intuitions, being sen- 
suous, depend oil affections, concepts on functions. By 
this function I mean the unity of the act of arranging 
different representations under one common representa- 
tion. Concepts are based therefore on the spontaneity 
of thought, sensuous intuitions on the receptivity of 
impressions. The only use which the understanding can 
make of these concepts is to form judgments by them. 
As no representation, except the intuitional, refers imme- 
diately to an object, no concept is ever referred to an 
object immediately, but to some other representation of 
it, whether it be an intuition, or itself a concept. A judg- 
ment is therefore a mediate knowledge of an object, or 
a representation of a representation of it. In every judg- 
ment we find a concept applying to many, and compre- 



Transcendental Analytic 57 

hending among the many one single representation, which 
is referred immediately to the object. Thus in the judg- 
ment that all bodies are divisible, 1 the concept of divisible 
applies to various other concepts, but is here applied in 
particular to the concept of body, and this concept of 
body to certain phenomena of our experience, [p. 69] 
These objects therefore are represented mediately by 
the concept of divisibility. All judgments therefore are 
functions of unity among our representations, the know- 
ledge of an object being brought about, not by an imme- 
diate representation, but by a higher one, comprehending 
this and several others, so that many possible cognitions 
are collected into one. As all acts of the understanding 
can be reduced to judgments, the understanding may be 
defined as the faculty of judging. For we saw before 
that the understanding is the faculty of thinking, and 
thinking is knowledge by means of concepts, while con- 
cepts, as predicates of possible judgments, refer to some 
representation of an object yet undetermined. Thus the 
concept of body means something, for instance, metal, 
which can be known by that concept. It is only a con- 
cept, because it comprehends other representations, by 
means of which it can be referred to objects. It is there- 
fore the predicate of a possible judgment, such as, that 
every metal is a body. Thus the functions of the under- 
standing can be discovered in their completeness, if it is 
possible to represent the functions of unity in judgments. 
That this is possible will be seen in the following 
section. 

1 Ver'dnderlich in the First Edition is rightly corrected into theilbar in 
later editions, though in the Second it is still veranderlich. 



5S 



Transcendental Analytic 






METHOD OF THE DISCOVERY OF ALL PURE CON- 
CEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING [p. 70] 

Section II 

Of the Logical Function of the Understanding in 
Judgments 

If we leave out of consideration the contents of any 

judgment and fix our attention on the mere form of the 
understanding, we find that the function of thought in a 
judgment can be brought under four heads, each of them 
with three subdivisions. They may be represented in the 
following table : — 





Quantity of Judgments 






Universal. 






Particular. 




II 


Singular. 


Ill 


Quality 




Relation 


Affirmative. 




Categorical. 


Negative. 




Hypothetical 


Infinite. 


IV 

Modality 
Problematical. 
Assertory. 
Apodictic. 


Disjunctive. 



As this classification may seem to differ in some, though 
not very essential points, from the usual technicalities of 
logicians, the following reservations against any [p. 71] 
possible misunderstanding will not be out of place. 

1. Logicians are quite right in saying that in using 
judgments in syllogisms, singular judgments may be 



Transcendental Analytic 59 

treated like universal ones. For as they have no extent 
at all, the predicate cannot refer to part only of that 
which is contained in the concept of the subject, and be 
excluded from the rest. The predicate is valid therefore 
of that concept, without any exception, as if it were a 
general concept, having an extent to the whole of which 
the predicate applies. But if we compare a singular with 
a general judgment, looking only at the quantity of know- 
ledge conveyed by it, the singular judgment stands to the 
universal judgment as unity to infinity, and is therefore 
essentially different from it. It is therefore, when we 
consider a singular judgment (Judicium singnlare), not 
only according to its own validity, but according to the 
quantity of knowledge which it conveys, as compared with 
other kinds of knowledge, that we see how different it is 
from general judgments {judicia communici), and how well 
it deserves a separate place in a complete table of the 
varieties of thought in general, though not in a logic 
limited to the use of judgments in reference to each other. 
2. In like manner infinite judgments must, in tran- 
scendental logic, be distinguished from affirmative ones, 
though in general logic they are properly classed to- 
gether, and do not constitute a separate part in [p. 72] 
the classification. General logic takes no account of the 
contents of the predicate (though it be negative), it only 
asks whether the predicate be affirmed or denied. Tran- 
scendental logic, on the contrary, considers a judgment 
according to the value also or the contents of a logical 
affirmation by means of a purely negative predicate, and 
asks how much is gained by that affirmation, with refer- 
ence to the sum total of knowledge. If I had said of the 
soul, that it is not mortal, I should, by means of a nega- 



60 Transcendental Analytic 

tive judgment, have at least warded off an error. Now 
it is true that, so far as the logical form is concerned, I 
have really affirmed by saying that the soul is non-mortal, 
because I thus place the soul in the unlimited sphere of 
non-mortal beings. As the mortal forms one part of the 
whole sphere of possible beings, the non-mortal the other, 
I have said no more by my proposition than that the soul 
is one of the infinite number of things which remain, 
when I take away all that is mortal. But by this the 
infinite sphere of all that is possible becomes limited only 
in so far that all that is mortal is excluded from it, and 
that afterwards the soul is placed in the remaining part 
of its original extent. This part, however, even after its 
limitation, still remains infinite, and several more parts of 
it may be taken away without extending thereby in the 
least the concept of the soul, or affirmatively de- [p. 73] 
termining it. These judgments, therefore, though infi- 
nite in respect to their logical extent, are, with respect 
to their contents, limitative only, and cannot therefore be 
passed over in a transcendental table of all varieties of 
thought in judgments, it being quite possible that the 
function of the understanding exercised in them may 
become of great importance in the field of its pure 
a priori knowledge. 

3. The following are all the relations of thought in 
judgments : — 

a. Relation of the predicate to the subject. 

b. Relation of the cause to its effect. 

c. Relation of subdivided knowledge, and of the col- 
lected members of the subdivision to each other. 

In the first class of judgments we consider two con- 
cepts, in the second two judgments, in the third several 






Transcendental Analytic 61 



judgments in their relation to each other. The hypo- 
thetical proposition, if perfect justice exists, the obsti- 
nately wicked is punished, contains really the relation of 
two propositions, namely, there is a perfect justice, and 
the obstinately wicked is punished. Whether both these 
propositions are true remains unsettled. It is only the 
consequence which is laid down by this judgment. 

The disjunctive judgment contains the relation of two 
or more propositions to each other, but not as a conse- 
quence, but in the form of a logical opposition, the sphere 
of the one excluding the sphere of the other, and at the 
same time in the form of community, all the propositions 
together filling the whole sphere of the intended know- 
ledge. The disjunctive judgment contains there- [p. 74] 
fore a relation of the parts of the whole sphere of a given 
knowledge, in which the sphere of each part forms the 
complement of the sphere of the other, all being con- 
tained within the whole sphere of the subdivided know- 
ledge. We may say, for instance, the world exists either 
by blind chance, or by internal necessity, or by an exter- 
nal cause. Each of these sentences occupies a part of 
the sphere of all possible knowledge with regard to the 
existence of the world, while all together occupy the whole 
sphere. To take away the knowledge from one of these 
spheres is the same as to place it into one of the other 
spheres, and to place it in one sphere is the same as to 
take it away from the others. There exists therefore in 
disjunctive judgments a certain community of the differ- 
ent divisions of knowledge, so that they mutually exclude 
each other, and yet thereby determine in their totality the 
true knowledge, because, if taken together, they constitute 
the whole contents of one given knowledge. This is all 



62 Transcendental Analytic 

I have to observe here for the sake of what is to follow 
hereafter. 

4. The modality of judgments is a very peculiar func- 
tion, for it contributes nothing to the contents of a judg- 
ment (because, besides quantity, quality, and relation, there 
is nothing else that could constitute the contents of a 
judgment), but refers only to the nature of the copula 
in relation to thought in general. Problematical judg- 
ments are those in which affirmation or negation are 
taken as possible (optional) only, while in assertory judg- 
•m'ents affirmation or negation is taken as real (true), in 
apodictic as necessary. 1 Thus the two judg- [p. 75] 
ments, the relation of which constitutes the hypothetical 
judgment (antecedens ct consequens) and likewise the 
judgments the reciprocal relation of which forms the dis- 
junctive judgment (members of subdivision), are always 
problematical only. In the example given above, the 
proposition, there exists a perfect justice, is not made 
as an assertory, but .only as an optional judgment, which 
may be accepted or not, the consequence only being 
assertory. It is clear therefore that some of these judg- 
ments may be wrong, and may yet, if taken problemati- 
cally, contain the conditions of the knowledge of truth. 
Thus, in our disjunctive judgment, one of its component 
judgments, namely, the world exists by blind chance, has 
a problematical meaning only, on the supposition that some 
one might for one moment take such a view, but serves, 
at the same time, like the indication of a false road among 
all the roads that might be taken, to find out the true one. 

1 As if in the first, thought were a function of the understanding, in the 
second, of the faculty of judgment, in the third, of reason; a remark which 
will receive its elucidation in the sequel. 



Transcendental Analytic 63 

The problematical proposition is therefore that which ex- 
presses logical (not objective) possibility only, that is, a 
free choice of admitting such a proposition, and a purely 
optional admission of it into the understanding. The 
assertory proposition implies logical reality or truth. 
Thus, for instance, in a hypothetical syllogism the ante- 
cedcns in the major is problematical, in the [p. 76] 
minor assertory, showing that the proposition conforms 
to the understanding according to its laws. The apo- 
dictic proposition represents the assertory as determined 
by these very laws of the understanding, and therefore 
as asserting a priori, and thus expresses logical necessity. 
As in this way everything is arranged step by step in the 
understanding, inasmuch as we begin with judging prob- 
lematically, .then proceed to an assertory acceptation, and 
finally maintain our proposition as inseparably united with 
the understanding, that is as necessary and apodictic, we 
may be allowed to call these three functions of modality 
so many varieties or momenta of thought. 

METHOD OF THE DISCOVERY OF ALL PURE CON- 
CEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING 

Section III 

Of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, or of the 

Categories 

General logic, as we have often said, takes no account 
of the contents of our knowledge, but expects that repre- 
sentations will come from elsewhere in order to be turned 
into concepts by an analytical process. Transcendental 
logic, on the contrary, has before it the manifold contents 



64 Transcendental Analytic 

of sensibility a priori, supplied by transcendental [p. yy~\ 
aesthetic as the material for the concepts of the pure 
understanding, without which those concepts would be 
without any contents, therefore entirely empty. It is true 
that space and time contain what is manifold in the pure 
intuition a priori, but they belong also to the conditions 
of the receptivity of our mind under which alone it can 
receive representations of objects, and which therefore 
must affect the concepts of them also. The spontaneity 
of our thought requires that what is manifold in the 
pure intuition should first be in a certain way examined, 
received, and connected, in order to produce a knowledge 
of it. This act I call synthesis. 

In its most general sense, I understand by synthesis 
the act of arranging different representations together, 
and of comprehending what is manifold in them under 
one form of knowledge. Such a synthesis is pure, if the 
manifold is not given empirically, but a priori (as in time 
and space). Before we can proceed to an analysis of our 
representations, these must first be given, and, as far as 
their contents are concerned, no concepts can arise ana- 
lytically. Knowledge is first produced by the synthesis of 
what is manifold (whether given empirically or a priori). 
That knowledge may at first be crude and confused and 
in need of analysis, but it is synthesis which really collects 
the elements of knowledge, and unites them to a certain 
extent. It is therefore the first thing which we [p. 78^ 
have to consider, if we want to form an opinion on the 
first origin of our knowledge. 

We shall see hereafter that synthesis in general is the 
mere result of what I call the faculty of imagination, a 
blind but indispensable function of the soul, without 



Transcendental Analytic 65 

which we should have no knowledge whatsoever, but of 
the existence of which we are scarcely conscious. But 
to reduce this synthesis to concepts is a function that 
belongs to the understanding, and by which the under- 
standing supplies us for the first time with knowledge 
properly so called. 

Pure synthesis in its most general meaning gives us the 
pure concept of the understanding. By this pure syn- 
thesis I mean that which rests on the foundation of what 
I call synthetical unity a priori. Thus our counting (as 
we best perceive when dealing with higher numbers) is 
a synthesis according to concepts, because resting on a 
common ground of unity, as for instance, the decade. 
The unity of the synthesis of the manifold becomes 
necessary under this concept. 

By means of analysis different representations are 
brought under one concept, a task treated of in general 
logic ; but how to bring, not the representations, but the 
pure synthesis of representations, under concepts, that is 
what transcendental logic means to teach. The first that 
must be given us a priori for the sake of knowledge of 
all objects, is the manifold in pure intuition. The second 
is, the synthesis of the manifold by means of [p. 79] 
imagination. But this does not yet produce true know- 
ledge. The concepts which impart unity to this pure 
synthesis and consist entirely in the representation of this 
necessary synthetical unity, add the third contribution 
towards the knowledge of an object, and rest on the 
understanding. 

The same function which imparts unity to various rep- 
resentations in one judgment imparts unity likewise to the 
mere synthesis of various representations in one intuition, 

V 



66 Transce?idental Analytic 

which in a general way may be called the pure concept 
of the understanding. The same understanding, and by 
the same operations by which in concepts it achieves 
through analytical unity the logical form of a judgment, 
introduces also, through the synthetical unity of the mani- 
fold in intuition, a transcendental element into its repre- 
sentations. They are therefore called pure concepts of 
the understanding, and they refer a priori to objects, 
which would be quite impossible in general logic. 

In this manner there arise exactly so many pure con- 
cepts of the understanding which refer a priori to objects 
of intuition in general, as there were in our table logical 
functions in all possible judgments, because those func- 
tions completely exhaust the understanding, and compre- 
hend every one of its faculties. Borrowing a term of 
Aristotle, we shall call these concepts categories, [p. 80] 
our intention being originally the same as his, though 
widely diverging from it in its practical application. 

TABLE OF CATEGORIES 





Of Quantity 




Unity. 




Plurality. 




Totality. 


II 


Ill 


Of Quality 


Of Relation 


Reality. 


Of Inherence and Subsistence 


Negation. 


{substantia et accidens). 


Limitation. 


Of Causality and Dependence 




(cause and effect). 




Of Community (reciprocity be- 




tween the active and the 




passive). 



Trcuiscendental A?ia lytic 67 

IV 

Of Modality 

Possibility. Impossibility. 
Existence. Non-existence. 
Necessity. Contingency. 

This then is a list of all original pure concepts of syn- 
thesis, which belong to the understanding a priori, and 
for which alone it is called pure understanding ; for it 
is by them alone that it can understand something in the 
manifold of intuition, that is, think an object in it. The 
classification is systematical, and founded on a common 
principle, namely, the faculty of judging (which is the 
same as the faculty of thinking). It is not the [p. 81] 
result of a search after pure concepts undertaken at hap- 
hazard, the completeness of which, as based on induc- 
tion only, could never be guaranteed. Nor could we 
otherwise understand why these concepts only, and no 
others, abide in the pure understanding. It was an enter- 
prise worthy of an acute thinker like Aristotle to try to 
discover these fundamental concepts ; but as he had no 
guiding principle he merely picked them up as they 
occurred to him, and at first gathered up ten of them, 
which he called categories or predicaments. Afterwards 
he thought he had discovered five more of them, which he 
added under the name of post-predicaments. But his table 
remained imperfect for all that, not to mention that we 
find in it some modes of pure sensibility (auando, nbi, 
situs, also prius, simul), also an empirical concept (motns), 
none of which can belong to this genealogical register of 
the understanding. Besides, there are some derivative 
concepts, counted among the fundamental concepts (actio, 
passio), while some of the latter are entirely wanting. 



68 Transcendental Analytic 

With regard to these, it should be remarked that the 
categories, as the true fundamental concepts of the pure 
understanding, have also their pure derivative concepts. 
These could not be passed over in a complete system of 
transcendental philosophy, but in a merely critical [p. 82] 
essay the mention of the fact may suffice. 

I should like to be allowed to call these pure but deriva- 
tive concepts of the understanding the prcdicabilia, in 
opposition to the predicamenta of the pure understanding. 
If we are once in possession of the fundamental and 
primitive concepts, it is easy to add the derivative and 
secondary, and thus to give a complete image of the 
genealogical tree of the pure understanding. As at pres- 
ent I am concerned not with the completeness, but only 
with the principles of a system, I leave this supplemen- 
tary work for a future occasion. In order to carry it out, 
one need only consult any of the ontological manuals, and 
place, for instance, under the category of causality the/r^- 
dicabilia of force, of action, and of passion ; under the 
category of community the predicabilia of presence and 
resistance ; under the predicaments of modality the pre- 
dicabilia of origin, extinction, change, etc. If we asso- 
ciate the categories among themselves or with the modes 
of pure sensibility, they yield us a large number of de- 
rivative concepts a priori, which it would be useful and 
interesting to mark and, if possible, to bring to a certain 
completeness, though this is not essential for our present 
purpose. 

I intentionally omit here the definitions of these cate- 
gories, though I may be in possession of them. 1 In the 

1 See, however, Karl's remarks on p. 210 (p. 241 of First Edition). 



Transcendental Analytic 69 

sequel I shall dissect these concepts so far as is [p. 83] 
sufficient for the purpose of the method which I am pre- 
paring. In a complete system of pure reason they might 
be justly demanded, but at present they would only make 
us lose sight of the principal object of our investigation, 
by rousing doubts and objections which, without injury to 
our essential object, may well be relegated to another 
time. The little I have said ought to be sufficient to 
show clearly that a complete dictionary of these concepts 
with all requisite explanations is not only possible, but 
easy. The compartments exist ; they have only to be 
filled, and with a systematic topic like the present the 
proper place to which each concept belongs cannot easily 
be missed, nor compartments be passed over which are 
still empty. 1 

1 Here follows in the Second Edition, Supplement XII. 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 

[ P . 8 4 ] 

CHAPTER II 

OF THE DEDUCTION OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF 
THE UNDERSTANDING 

Section I 

Of the Principles of a Transcendental Deduction in 
General 

Jurists, when speaking of rights and claims, distin- 
guish in every lawsuit the question of right (quid juris) 
from the question of fact (quid facti), and in demanding 
proof of both they call the former, which is to show 
the right or, it may be, the claim, the deduction. We, 
not being jurists, make use of a number of empirical 
concepts, without opposition from anybody, and consider 
ourselves justified, without any deduction, in attaching 
to them a sense or imaginary meaning, because we can 
always appeal to experience to prove their objective real- 
ity. There exist however illegitimate concepts also, such 
as, for instance, chance, or fate, which through an almost 
general indulgence are allowed to be current, but are yet 
from time to time challenged by the question quid juris. 
In that case we are greatly embarrassed in looking for 
their deduction, there being no clear legal title, whether 

70 



Transcendental Analytic yi 

• 
from experience or from reason, on which their [p. 85] 
claim to employment could be clearly established. 

Among the many concepts, however, which enter into 
the complicated code of human knowledge, there are 
some which are destined for pure use a priori, indepen- 
dent of all experience, and such a claim requires at all 
times a deduction, 1 because proofs from experience would 
not be sufficient to establish the legitimacy of such a use, 
though it is necessary to know how much concepts can 
refer to objects which they do not find in experience. I 
call the explanation of the manner how such concepts 
can a priori refer to objects their transcendental deduc- 
tion, and distinguish it from the empirical deduction 
which shows the manner how a concept may be gained 
by experience and by reflection on experience ; this does 
not touch the legitimacy, but only the fact whence the 
possession of the concept arose. 

We have already become acquainted with two totally 
distinct classes of concepts, which nevertheless agree in 
this, that they both refer a priori to objects, namely, 
the concepts of space and time as forms of sensibility, 
and the categories as concepts of the understanding. It 
would be labour lost to attempt an empirical deduction 
of them, because their distinguishing characteristic is 
that they refer to objects without having borrowed any- 
thing from experience for their representation, [p. 86~] 
If therefore a deduction of them is necessary, it can 
only be transcendental. 

It is possible, however, with regard to these concepts, 
as with regard to all knowledge, to try to discover in 

1 That is a transcendental deduction. 



j 2 Transcendental Analytic 

• 

experience, if not the principle of their possibility, yet 
the contingent causes of their production. And here 
we see that the impressions of the senses give the first 
impulse to the whole faculty of knowledge with respect 
to them, and thus produce experience which consists of 
two very heterogeneous elements, namely, matter for 
knowledge, derived from the senses, and a certain form 
according to which it is arranged, derived from the inter- 
nal source of pure intuition and pure thought, first brought 
into action by the former, and then producing concepts. 
Such an investigation of the first efforts of our faculty 
of knowledge, beginning with single perceptions and ris- 
ing to general concepts, is no doubt very useful, and we 
have to thank the famous Locke for having been the 
first to open the way to it. A deduction of the pure 
concepts a priori, however, is quite impossible in that 
way. It lies in a different direction, because, with refer- 
ence to their future use, which is to be entirely indepen- 
dent of experience, a very different certificate of birth 
will be required from that of mere descent from experi- 
ence. We may call this attempted physiological deriva- 
tion (which cannot properly be called deduction, [p. 87^ 
because it refers to a quaestio facti), the explanation of 
the possession of pure knowledge. It is clear therefore 
that of these pure concepts a priori a transcendental 
deduction only is possible, and that to attempt an empiri- 
cal deduction of them is mere waste of time, which no 
one would think of except those who have never under- 
stood the very peculiar nature of that kind of knowledge. 
But though it may be admitted that the only possible 
deduction of pure knowledge a priori must be transcen- 
dental, it has not yet been proved that such a deduction 



Transcendental Analytic 73 

is absolutely necessary. We have before, by means of 
a transcendental deduction, followed up the concepts of 
space and time to their very sources, and explained and 
defined their objective validity a priori. Geometry, how- 
ever, moves along with a steady step, through every kind 
of knowledge a priori, without having to ask for a cer- 
tificate from philosophy as to the pure legitimate descent 
of its fundamental concept of space. But it should be 
remarked that in geometry this concept is used with 
reference to the outer world of sense only, of which 
space is the pure form of intuition, and where geometri- 
cal knowledge, being based on a priori intuition, possesses 
immediate evidence, the objects being given, so far as 
their form is concerned, through their very knowledge 
a priori in intuition. When we come, however, [p. 88] 
to the pure concepts .of the understanding, it becomes 
absolutely necessary to look for a transcendental, deduc- 
tion, not only for them, but for space also, because they, 
not being founded on experience, apply to objects gener- 
ally, without any of the conditions of sensibility ; and, 
speaking of objects, not through predicates of intuition 
and sensibility, but of pure thought a priori, are not 
able to produce in intuition a priori any object on which, 
previous to all experience, their synthesis was founded. 
These concepts of pure understanding, therefore, not 
only excite suspicion with regard to the objective validity 
and the limits of their own application, but render even 
the concept of space equivocal, because of an inclination 
to apply it beyond the conditions of sensuous intuition, 
which was the very reason that made a transcendental 
deduction of it, such as we gave before, necessary. Be- 
fore the reader has made a single step in the field of 



74 Transcendental Analytic 

pure reason, he must be convinced of the inevitable 
necessity of such a transcendental deduction, otherwise 
he would walk on blindly and, after having strayed in 
every direction, he would only return to the same igno- 
rance from which he started. He must at the same time 
perceive the inevitable difficulty of such a deduction, so 
that he may not complain about obscurity where the 
object itself is obscure, or weary too soon with our re- 
moval of obstacles, the fact being that we have [p. 89] 
either to surrender altogether all claims to the know- 
ledge of pure reason — the most favourite field of all 
philosophers, because extending beyond the limits of all 
possible experience — or to bring this critical investigation 
to perfection. 

It was easy to show before, when treating of the con- 
cepts of space and time, how these, though being know- 
ledge a priori, refer necessarily to objects, and how they 
make a synthetical knowledge of them possible, which is 
independent of all experience. For, as no object can 
appear to us, that is, become an object of empirical intui- 
tion, except through such pure forms of sensibility, space 
and time are pure intuitions which contain a priori the con- 
ditions of the possibility of objects as phenomena, and the 
synthesis in these intuitions possesses objective validity. 

The categories of the understanding, on the contrary, 
are not conditions under which objects can be given in 
intuition, and it is quite possible therefore that objects 
should appear to us without any necessary reference to 
the functions of the understanding, thus showing that the 
understanding contains by no means any of their con- 
ditions a priori. There arises therefore here a difficulty, 
which we did not meet with in the field of sensibility, 



Transcendental Analytic 75 

namely, how subjective conditions of thought can have 
objective validity, that is, become conditions of the possi- 
bility of the knowledge of objects. It cannot be [p. 90] 
denied that phenomena may be given in intuition without 
the functions of the understanding. For if we take, for 
instance, the concept of cause, which implies a peculiar 
kind of synthesis, consisting in placing according to a rule 
after something called A something totally different from 
it, B, we cannot say that it is a priori clear why phenomena 
should contain something of this kind. We cannot appeal 
for it to experience, because what has to be proved is the 
objective validity of this concept a priori. It would re- 
main therefore a pHori doubtful whether such a concept 
be not altogether empty, and without any corresponding 
object among phenomena. It is different with objects of 
sensuous intuition. They must conform to the formal 
conditions of sensibility existing a priori in the mind, 
because otherwise they could in no way be objects to us. 
But why besides this they should conform to the condi- 
tions which the understanding requires for the synthetical 
unity of thought, does not seem to follow quite so easily. 
For we could quite well imagine that phenomena might 
possibly be such that the understanding should not find 
them conforming to the conditions of its synthetical unity, 
and all might be in such confusion that nothing should 
appear in the succession of phenomena which could sup- 
ply a rule of synthesis, and correspond, for instance, to 
the concept of cause and effect, so that this concept would 
thus be quite empty, null, and meaningless. With all this 
phenomena would offer objects to our intuition, because 
intuition by itself does not require the functions [p. 91] 
of thought. 



y6 Transcendental Analytic 

It might be imagined that we could escape from the 
trouble of these investigations by saying that experience 
offers continually examples of such regularity of phe- 
nomena as to induce us to abstract from it the concept 
of cause, and it might be attempted to prove thereby the 
objective validity of such a concept. But it ought to be 
seen that in this way the concept of cause cannot possibly 
arise, and that such a concept ought either to be founded 
a priori in the understanding or be surrendered altogether 
as a mere hallucination. For this concept requires strictly 
that something, A, should be of such a nature that some- 
thing else, B, follows from it necessarily and according to 
an absolutely universal rule. Phenomena no doubt supply 
us with cases from which a rule becomes possible accord- 
ing to which something happens usually, but never so that 
the result should be necessary. There is a dignity in the 
synthesis of cause and effect which cannot be expressed 
empirically, for it implies that the effect is not only an 
accessory to the cause, but given by it and springing from 
it. Nor is the absolute universality of the rule a quality 
inherent in empirical rules, which by means of induction 
cannot receive any but a relative universality, that [p. 92] 
is, a more or less extended applicability. If we were to 
treat the pure concepts of the understanding as merely 
empirical products, we should completely change their 
character and their use. 

Transition to a Transcende7ital Deduction of tJie Categories 

Two ways only are possible in which synthetical repre- 
sentations and their objects can agree, can refer to each 
other with necessity, and so to say meet each other. 
Either it is the object alone that makes the representation 



Transcendental Analytic jj 

possible, or it is the representation alone that makes the 
object possible. In the former case their relation is em- 
pirical only, and the representation therefore never possible 
a priori. This applies to phenomena with reference to 
whatever in them belongs to sensation. In the latter case, 
though representation by itself (for we do not speak here 
of its 1 causality by means of the will) cannot produce its 
object so far as its existence is concerned, nevertheless 
the representation determines the object a priori, if 
through it alone it is possible to know anything as an 
object. To know a thing as an object is possible only 
under two conditions. First, there must be intuition by 
which the object is given us, though as a phenomenon 
only, secondly, there must be a concept by which [p. 93] 
an object is thought as corresponding to that intuition. 
From what we have said before it is clear that the first 
condition, namely, that under which alone objects can be 
seen, exists, so far as the form of intuition is concerned, 
in the soul a priori. All phenomena therefore must con- 
form to that formal condition of sensibility, because it is 
through it alone that they appear, that is, that they are 
given and empirically seen. 

Now the question arises whether there are not also 
antecedent concepts a priori, forming conditions under 
which alone something can be, if not seen, yet thought as 
an object in general ; for in that case all empirical know- 
ledge of objects would necessarily conform to such con- 
cepts, it being impossible that anything should become an 
object of experience without them. All experience con- 
tains, besides the intuition of the senses by which some- 

1 Read deren instead of dessert. 



78 Transcendental Analytic 

thing is given, a concept also of the object, which is given 
in intuition as a phenomenon. Such concepts of objects 
in general therefore must form conditions a priori of all 
knowledge produced by experience, and the objective 
validity of the categories, as being such concepts a priori, 
rests on this very fact that by them alone, so far as the 
form of thought is concerned, experience becomes possi- 
ble. If by them only it is possible to think any object of 
experience, it follows that they refer by necessity and 
a priori to all objects of experience. 

There is therefore a principle for the trans- [p. 94] 
cendental deduction of all concepts a priori which must 
guide the whole of our investigation, namely, that all 
must be recognized as conditions a priori of the possibility 
of experience, whether of intuition, which is found in it, 
or of thought. Concepts which supply the objective 
ground of the possibility of experience are for that very 
reason necessary. An analysis of the experience in which 
they are found would not be a deduction, but a mere illus- 
tration, because they would there have an accidental char- 
acter only. Nay, without their original relation to all 
possible experience in which objects of knowledge occur, 
their relation to any single object would be quite incom- 
prehensible. 

[There are three original sources, or call them faculties 
or powers of the soul, which contain the conditions of the 
possibility of all experience, and which themselves cannot 
be derived from any other faculty, namely, sense, imagina- 
tion, and apperception. On them is founded — 

1. The synopsis of the manifold a priori through the 
senses. 

2. The synthesis of this manifold through the imagination. 



Transcendental Analytic 79 

3. The unity of that synthesis by means of original 
apperception. 

Besides their empirical use all these faculties have a 
transcendental use also, referring to the form only and 
possible a priori. With regard to the senses we have dis- 
cussed that transcendental use in the first part, [p. 95] 
and we shall now proceed to an investigation of the re- 
maining two, according to their true nature. 1 ] 

DEDUCTION OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF THE 
UNDERSTANDING 

Section II 
Of the a priori Grounds for the Possibility of Experience 

[That a concept should be produced entirely a priori 
and yet refer to an object, though itself neither belonging 
to the sphere of possible experience, nor consisting of the 
elements of such an experience, is self-contradictory and 
impossible. It would have no contents, because no intui- 
tion corresponds to it, and intuitions by which objects are 
given to us constitute the whole field or the complete 
object of possible experience. An a priori concept there- 
fore not referring to experience would be the logical form 
only of a concept, but not the concept itself by which 
something is thought. 

If therefore there exist any pure concepts a priori, 
though they cannot contain anything empirical, they must 
nevertheless all be conditions a priori of a possible ex- 
perience, on which alone their objective reality depends. 

1 The last paragraph is omitted in the Second Edition. There is instead a 
criticism of Locke and Hume, Supplement XIII. The Deduction of the 
Categories is much changed, as seen in Supplement XIV. 



80 Transcendental Analytic 

If therefore we wish to know how pure concepts of the 
understanding are possible, we must try to find out what 
are the conditions a priori on which the possibility [p. 96] 
of experience depends, nay, on which it is founded, apart 
from all that is empirical in phenomena. A concept ex- 
pressing this formal and objective condition of experience 
with sufficient generality might properly be called a pure 
concept of the understanding. If we once have these 
pure concepts of the understanding, we may also imagine 
objects which are either impossible, or, if not impossible 
in themselves, yet can never be given in any experience. 
We have only in the connection of those concepts to leave 
out something which necessarily belongs to the conditions 
of a possible experience (concept of a spirit), or to extend 
pure concepts of the understanding beyond what can be 
reached by experience (concept of God). But trie ele- 
ments of all knowledge a priori, even of gratuitous and 
preposterous fancies, though not borrowed from experi- 
ence (for in that case they would not be knowledge a 
priori) must nevertheless contain the pure conditions 
a priori of a possible experience and its object, otherwise 
not only would nothing be thought by them, but they 
themselves, being without data, could never arise in our 
mind. 

Such concepts, then, which comprehend the pure think- 
ing a priori involved in every experience, are discovered 
in the categories, and it is really a sufficient deduction of 
them and a justification of their objective validity, if we 
succeed in proving that by them alone an object [p. 97] 
can be thought. But as in such a process of thinking 
more is at work than the faculty of thinking only, namely, 
the understanding, and as the understanding, as a faculty 



Transcendental Analytic 81 

of knowledge which is meant to refer to objects, requires 
quite as much an explanation as to the possibility of such 
a reference, it is necessary for us to consider the subjective 
sources which form the foundation a priori for the possi- 
bility of experience, not according to their empirical, but 
according to their transcendental character. 

If every single representation stood by itself, as if 
isolated and separated from the others, nothing like what 
we call knowledge could ever arise, because knowledge 
forms a whole of representations connected and compared 
with each other. If therefore I ascribe to the senses a 
synopsis, because in their intuition they contain something 
manifold, there corresponds to it always a synthesis, and 
receptivity can make knowledge possible only when 
joined with spontaneity. This spontaneity, now, appears 
as a threefold synthesis which must necessarily take place 
in every kind of knowledge, namely, first, that of the 
apprehension of representations as modifications of the 
soul in intuition, secondly, of the reproduction of them in 
the imagination, and, thirdly, that of their recognition 
in concepts. This leads us to three subjective sources of 
knowledge which render possible the understanding, and 
through it all experience as an empirical product of the 
understanding. [p. 98] 

Preliminary Remark 

The deduction of the categories is beset with so many 
difficulties and obliges us to enter so deeply into the first 
grounds of the possibility of our knowledge in general, 
that I thought it more expedient, in order to avoid the 
lengthiness of a complete theory, and yet to omit nothing 
in so essential an investigation, to add the following four 



82 Transcendental Analytic 

paragraphs with a view of preparing rather than instruct- 
ing the reader. After that only I shall in the third sec- 
tion proceed to a systematical discussion of these elements 
of the understanding. Till then the reader must not 
allow himself to be frightened by a certain amount of 
obscurity which at first is inevitable on a road never 
trodden before, but which, when we come to that section, 
will give way, I hope, to a complete comprehension. 

I 

Of the Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition 

Whatever the origin of our representations may be, 
whether they be due to the influence of external things 
or to internal causes, whether they have arisen a priori 
or empirically as phenomena, as modifications of the 
mind they must always belong to the internal [p. 99] 
sense, and all our knowledge must therefore finally be 
subject to the formal condition of that internal sense, 
namely, time, in which they are all arranged, joined, 
and brought into certain relations to each other. This 
is a general remark which must never be forgotten in 
all that follows. 

Every representation contains something manifold, 
which could not be represented as such, unless the. 
mind distinguished the time in the succession of one 
impression after another ; for as contained in one 
moment, each representation can never be anything 
but absolute unity. In order to change this manifold 
into a unity of intuition (as, for instance, in the repre- 
sentation of space), it is necessary first to run through 
the manifold and then to hold it together. It is this 



Transcendental Analytic S3 

act which I call the synthesis of apprehension, because 
it refers directly to intuition which no doubt offers some- 
thing manifold, but which, without a synthesis, can never 
make it such, as it is contained in one representation. 

This synthesis of apprehension must itself be carried 
out a priori also, that is, with reference to representations 
which are not empirical. For without it we should never 
be able to have the representations either of space or time 
a priori, because these cannot be produced except [p. 100] 
by a synthesis of the manifold which the senses offer in 
their original receptivity. It follows therefore that we 
have a pure synthesis of apprehension. 

II 

Of the Synthesis of Reproduction in Imagination 

It is no doubt nothing but an empirical law according 
to which representations which have often followed or 
accompanied one another, become associated in the end 
and so closely united that, even without the presence of 
the object, one of these representations will, according to 
an invariable law, produce a transition of the mind to the 
other. This law of reproduction, however, presupposes 
that the phenomena themselves are really subject to such 
a rule, and that there is in the variety of these representa- 
tions a sequence and concomitancy subject to certain 
rules ; for without this the faculty of empirical imagina- 
tion would never find anything to do that it is able to 
do, and remain therefore buried within our mind as a 
dead faculty, unknown to ourselves. If cinnabar were 
sometimes red and sometimes black, sometimes light and 
sometimes heavy, if a man could be changed now into 



84 Transcendental Analytic 

this, now into another animal shape, if on the longest day 
the fields were sometimes covered with fruit, [p. 101] 
sometimes with ice and snow, the faculty of my empirical 
imagination would never be in a position, when represent- 
ing red colour, to think of heavy cinnabar. Nor, if a cer- 
tain name could be given sometimes to this, sometimes 
to that object, or if that the same object could sometimes 
be called by one, and sometimes by another name, with- 
out any rule to which representations are subject by them- 
selves, would it be possible that any empirical synthesis 
of reproduction should ever take place. 

There must therefore be something to make this repro- 
duction of phenomena possible by being itself the founda- 
tion a priori of a necessary synthetical unity of them. 
This becomes clear if we only remember that all phe- 
nomena are not things by themselves, but only the play 
of our representations, all of which are in the end deter- 
minations only of the internal sense. If therefore we 
could prove that even our purest intuitions a priori give 
us no knowledge, unless they contain such a combination 
of the manifold as to render a constant synthesis of repro- 
duction possible, it would follow that this synthesis of the 
imagination is, before all experience, founded on principles 
a priori, and that we must admit a pure transcendental 
synthesis of imagination which forms even the foundation 
of the possibility of all experience, such experience being 
impossible without the reproducibility of phe- [p. 102] 
nomena. Now, when I draw a line in thought, or if I 
think the time from one noon to another, or if I only 
represent to myself a certain number, it is clear that I 
must first necessarily apprehend one of these manifold 
representations after another. If I were to lose from my 



Transcendental Analytic 85 

thoughts what precedes, whether the first parts of a line 
or the antecedent portions of time, or the numerical unities 
representing one after the other, and if, while I proceed 
to what follows, I were unable to reproduce what came 
before, there would never be a complete representation, 
and none of the before-mentioned thoughts, not even the 
first and purest representations of space and time, could 
ever arise within us. 

The synthesis of apprehension is therefore inseparably 
connected with the synthesis of reproduction, and as the 
former constitutes the transcendental ground of the possi- 
bility of all knowledge in general (not only of empirical, 
but also of pure a priori knowledge), it follows that a 
reproductive synthesis of imagination belongs to the tran- 
scendental acts of the soul. We may therefore call this 
faculty the transcendental faculty of imagination. 

in [ P . 103] 

Of the Synthesis of Recognition in Concepts 

Without our being conscious that what we are thinking 
now is the same as what we thought a moment before, all 
reproduction in the series of representations would be vain. 
Each representation would, in its present state, be a new 
one, and in no wise belonging to the act by which it was 
to be produced by degrees, and the manifold in it would 
never form a whole, because deprived of that unity which 
consciousness alone can impart to it. If in counting I for- 
get that the unities which now present themselves to my 
mind have been added gradually one to the other, I should 
not know the production of the quantity by the successive 
addition of one to one, nor should I know consequently 



86 Transcendental Analytic 

the number, produced by the counting, this number being 
a concept consisting entirely in the consciousness of that 
unity of synthesis. 

The very word of concept (Begriff) could have sug- 
gested this remark, for it is the one consciousness which 
unites the manifold that has been perceived successively, 
and afterwards reproduced into one representation. This 
consciousness may often be very faint, and we may con- 
nect it with the effect only, and not with the act itself, i.e. 
with the production of a representation. But in [p. 104] 
spite of this, that consciousness, though deficient in pointed 
clearness, must always be there, and without it, concepts, 
and with them, knowledge of objects are perfectly impos- 
sible. 

And here we must needs arrive at a clear understanding 
of what we mean by an object of representations. We 
said before that phenomena are nothing but sensuous rep- 
resentations, which therefore by themselves must not be 
taken for objects outside our faculty of representation. 
What then do we mean if we speak of an object corre- 
sponding to, and therefore also different from our know- 
ledge ? It is easy to see that such an object can only 
be conceived as something in general —x\ because, beside 
our knowledge, we have absolutely nothing which we could 
put down as corresponding to that knowledge. 

Now we find that our conception of the relation of all 
knowledge to its object contains something of necessity, 
the object being looked upon as that which prevents our 
knowledge from being determined at haphazard, and 
causes it to be determined a priori in a certain way, be- 
cause, as they are all to refer to an object, they must 
necessarily, with regard to that object, agree with each 



Transcendental Analytic 87 

other, that is to say, possess that unity which [p. 105] 
constitutes the concept of an object. 

It is clear also that, as we can only deal with the mani- 
fold in our representations, and as the x corresponding to 
them (the object), since it is to be something different 
from all our representations, is really nothing to us, it is 
clear, I say, that the unity, necessitated by the object, can- 
not be anything but the formal unity of our consciousness 
in the synthesis of the manifold in our representations. 
Then and then only do we say that we know an object, if 
we have produced synthetical unity in the manifold of 
intuition. Such unity is impossible, if the intuition could 
not be produced, according to a rule, by such a function 
of synthesis as makes the reproduction of the manifold 
a priori necessary, and a concept in which that manifold 
is united, possible. Thus we conceive a triangle as an 
object, if we are conscious of the combination of three 
straight lines, according to a rule, which renders such an 
intuition possible at all times. This unity of ride deter- 
mines the manifold and limits it to conditions which ren- 
der the unity of apperception possible, and the concept of 
that unity is really the representation of the object = .r, 
which I think, by means of the predicates of a triangle. 

No knowledge is possible without a concept, [p. 106] 
however obscure or imperfect it may be, and a concept 
is always, with regard to its form, something general, 
something that can serve as a rule. Thus the concept of 
body serves as a rule to our knowledge of external phe- 
nomena, according to the unity of the manifold which is 
thought by it. It can only be such a rule of intuitions 
because representing, in any given phenomena, the neces- 
sary reproduction of their manifold elements, or the syn- 



88 Transcendental Analytic 

thetical unity in our consciousness of them. Thus the 
concept of body, whenever we perceive something outside 
us, necessitates the representation of extension, and, with 
it, those of impermeability, shape, etc. 

Necessity is always founded on transcendental condi- 
tions. There must be therefore a transcendental ground of 
the unity of our consciousness in the synthesis of the man- 
ifold of all our intuitions, and therefore also a transcendental 
ground of all concepts of objects in general, and therefore 
again of all objects of experience, without which it would 
be impossible to add to our intuitions the thought of an 
object, for the object is no more than that something of 
which the concept predicates such a necessity of synthesis. 

That original and transcendental condition is nothing 
else but what I call transcendental apperception, [p. 107] 
The consciousness of oneself, according to the determina- 
tions of our state, is, with all our internal perceptions, em- 
pirical only, and always transient. There can be no fixed 
or permanent self in that stream of internal phenomena. 
It is generally called the internal sense, or the empirical 
apperception. What is necessarily to be represented as 
numerically identical with itself, cannot be thought as 
such by means of empirical data only. It must be a con- 
dition which precedes all experience, and in fact renders it 
possible, for thus only could such a transcendental suppo- 
sition acquire validity. 

No knowledge can take place in us, no conjunction or 
unity of one kind of knowledge with another, without that 
unity of consciousness which precedes all data of intui- 
tion, and without reference to which no representation 
of objects is possible. This pure, original, and unchange- 
able consciousness I shall call transcendental apperception. 



Transcendental Analytic 89 

That it deserves such a name may be seen from the fact 
that even the purest objective unity, namely, that of the 
concepts a priori (space and time), is possible only by a 
reference of all intuitions to it. The numerical unity of 
that apperception therefore forms the a priori condition of 
all concepts, as does the manifoldness of space and time 
of the intuitions of the senses. 

The same tran scendental unity of apperc ep- [p. 108] 
^iion constitutes, in all possible phenomena which may 
come together in our experience, a connection of all these 
representations according to laws. For that unity of con- 
sciousness would be impossible, if the mind, in the know- 
ledge of the manifold, could not become conscious of the 
identity of function, by which it unites the manifold syn- 
thetically in one knowledge. Therefore the original and 
necessary consciousness of the identity of oneself is at the 
same time a consciousness of an equally necessary unity 
of the synthesis of all phenomena according to concepts, 
that is, according to rules, which render them not only 
necessarily reproducible, but assign also to their intuition 
an object, that is, a concept of something in which they 
are necessarily united. The mind could never conceive 
the identity of itself in the manifoldness of its representa- 
tions (and this a priori) if it did not clearly perceive the 
identity of its action, by which it subjects all synthesis of 
apprehension (which is empirical) to a transcendental 
unity, and thus renders its regular coherence a priori pos- 
sible. When we have clearly perceived this, we shall be 
able to determine more accurately our concept of an ob- 
ject in general. All representations have, as representa- 
tions, their object, and can themselves in turn become 
objects of other representations. The only objects which 



9<D Transcendental Analytic 

can be given to us immediately are phenomena, and what- 
ever in them refers immediately to the object is [p. 109] 
called intuition. These phenomena, however, are not 
things in themselves, but representations only which have 
their object, but an object that can no longer be seen by 
us, and may therefore be called the not-empirical, that is, 
the transcendental object, = x. 

The pure concept of such a transcendental object 
(which in reality in all our knowledge is always the same 
= x) is that which alone can give to all our empirical con- 
cepts a relation to an object or objective reality. That 
concept cannot contain any definite intuition, and can 
therefore refer to that unity only, which must be found 
in the manifold of our knowledge, so far as it stands in re- 
lation to an object. That relation is nothing else but a- 
necessary unity of consciousness, and therefore also of 
the synthesis of the manifold, by a common function of 
the mind, which unites it in one representation. As that 
unity must be considered as a priori necessary (because, 
without it, our knowledge would be without an object), we 
may conclude that the relation to a transcendental object, 
that is, the objective reality of our empirical knowledge, 
rests on a transcendental law, that all phenomena, if they 
are to give us objects, must be subject to rules [p. no] 
a priori of a synthetical unity of these objects, by which 
rules alone their mutual relation in an empirical intuition 
becomes possible : that is, they must be subject, in experi- 
ence, to the conditions of the necessary unity of apper- 
ception quite as much as, in mere intuition, to the formal 
conditions of space and time. Without this no knowledge 
is possible. 



Transcende7ital Analytic 91 



IV 



Preliminary Explanation of the Possibility of the Categories 
as Knowledge a priori 

There is but one experience in which all perceptions 
are represented as in permanent and regular connection, 
as there is but one space and one time in which all forms 
of phenomena and all relations of being or not being take 
place. If we speak of different experiences, we only- 
mean different perceptions so far as they belong to one 
and the same general experience. It is the permanent 
and synthetical unity of perceptions that constitutes the 
form of experience, and experience is nothing but the syn- 
thetical unity of phenomena according to concepts. 

Unity of synthesis, according to empirical concepts, 
would be purely accidental, nay, unless these [p. in] 
were founded on a transcendental ground of unity, a whole 
crowd of phenomena might rush into our soul, without 
ever forming real experience. All relation between our 
knowledge and its objects would be lost at the same time, 
because that knowledge would no longer be held together 
by general and necessary laws ; it would therefore become 
thoughtless intuition, never knowledge, and would be to 
us the same as nothing. 

The conditions a priori of any possible experience in 
general are at the same time conditions of the possibility 
of any objects of our experience. Now I maintain that 
the categories of which we are speaking are nothing but 
the conditions of thought which make experience possible, 
as much as space and time contain the conditions of that 
intuition which forms experience. These categories there- 



92 Transcendental Analytic 

fore are also fundamental concepts by which we think 
objects in general for the phenomena, and have therefore 
a priori objective validity. This is exactly what we wish 
to prove. 

The possibility, nay the necessity of these categories 
rests on the relation between our whole sensibility, and 
therefore all possible phenomena, and that original apper- 
ception in which everything must be necessarily subject 
to the conditions of the permanent unity of self-conscious- 
ness, that is, must submit to the general functions [p. 1 1 2] 
of that synthesis which we call synthesis according to 
concepts, by which alone our apperception can prove its 
permanent and necessary identity a priori. Thus the con- 
cept of cause is nothing but a synthesis of that which 
follows in temporal succession, with other phenomena, but 
a synthesis according to concepts: and without such a 
unity which rests on a rule a priori, and subjects all phe- 
nomena to itself, no permanent and general, and therefore 
necessary unity of consciousness would be formed in the 
manifold of our perceptions. Such perceptions would 
then belong to no experience at all, they would be without 
an object, a blind play of representations, — less even than 
a dream. 

All attempts therefore at deriving those pure concepts 
of the understanding from experience, and ascribing to 
them a purely empirical origin, are perfectly vain and 
useless. I shall not dwell here on the fact that a concept 
of cause, for instance, contains an element of necessity, 
which no experience can ever supply, because experience, 
though it teaches us that after one phenomenon something 
else follows habitually, can never teach us that it follows 
necessarily, nor that we could a priori, and without any 



I 



Transcendental Analytic 93 

limitation, derive from it, as a condition, any conclusion as 
to what must follow. And thus I ask with reference to 
that empirical rule of association, which must always be 
admitted if we say that everything in the succession of 
events is so entirely subject to rules that nothing [p. 1 13] 
ever happens without something preceding it on which it 
always follows, — What does it rest on, if it is a law of 
nature, nay, how is that very association possible ? You 
call the ground for the possibility of the association of the 
manifold, so far as it is contained in the objects them- 
selves, the affinity of the manifold. I ask, therefore, how 
do you make that permanent affinity by which phenomena 
stand, nay, must stand, under permanent laws, conceivable 
to yourselves ? 

According to my principles it is easily, conceivable. All 
possible phenomena belong, as representations, to the 
whole of our possible self-consciousness. From this, as a 
transcendental representation, numerical identity is insep- 
arable and a priori certain, because nothing can become 
knowledge except by means of that original apperception. 
As this identity must necessarily enter into the -synthesis 
of the whole of the manifold of phenomena, if that syn- 
thesis is to become empirical knowledge, it follows that 
the phenomena are subject to conditions a priori to which 
their synthesis (in apprehension) must always conform. 
The representation of a general condition according to 
which something manifold can be arranged (with uni- 
formity) is called a ride, if it must be so arranged, a law. 
All phenomena therefore stand in a permanent connection 
according to necessary laws, and thus possess [p. 114] 
that transcendental affinity of which the empirical is a 
mere consequence. 



94 Transcendental Analytic 

It sounds no doubt very strange and absurd that nature 
should have to conform to our subjective ground of apper- 
ception, nay, be dependent on it, with respect to her laws. 
But if we consider that what we call nature is nothing but 
a whole of phenomena, not a thing by itself, but a number 
of representations in our soul, we shall no longer be sur- 
prised that we only see her through the fundamental 
faculty of all our knowledge, namely, the transcendental 
apperception, and in that unity without which it could, not 
be called the object (or the whole) of all possible experience, 
that is, nature. We shall thus also understand why we 
can recognise this unity a priori, and therefore as nec- 
essary, which would be perfectly impossible if it were 
given by itself and independent of the first sources of our 
own thinking. In that case I could not tell whence we 
should take the synthetical propositions of such general 
unity of nature. They would have to be taken from the 
objects of nature themselves, and as this could be done 
empirically only, we could derive from it none but an 
accidental unity, which is very different from that neces- 
sary connection which we mean when speaking of nature. 

DEDUCTION OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF THE 
UNDERSTANDING [p. 115] 

Section III 

Of the Relation of the Understanding to Objects in General, 
and the Possibility of Knowing Them a priori 

What in the preceding section we have discussed 
singly and separately we shall now try to treat in con- 
nection with each other and as a whole. We saw that 
there are three subjective sources of knowledge on 



Transcendental Analytic 95 

which the possibility of all experience and of the 
knowledge of its objects depends, namely, sense, imagi- 
nation, and apperception. Each of them may be con- 
sidered as empirical in its application to given phenom- 
ena ; all, however, are also elements or grounds a priori 
which render their empirical application possible. Sense 
represents phenomena empirically in perception, imagina- 
tion in association (and reproduction), apperceptio7i in the 
empirical consciousness of the identity of these reproduc- 
tive representations with the phenomena by which they 
were given ; therefore in recognition. 

The whole of our perception rests a priori on pure in- 
tuition (if the perception is regarded as representation, 
then on time, as the form of our internal intuition), the 
association of it (the whole) on the pure syn- [p. 116] 
thesis of imagination, and our empirical consciousness 
of it on pure apperception, that is, on the permanent 
identity of oneself in the midst of all possible repre- 
sentations. 

If we wish to follow up the internal ground of this 
connection of representations to that point towards 
which they must all converge, and where they receive 
for the first time that unity of knowledge which is 
requisite for every possible experience, we must begin 
with pure apperception. Intuitions are nothing to us, 
and do not concern us in the least, if they cannot be 
received into our consciousness, into which they may 
enter either directly or indirectly. Knowledge is im- 
possible in any other way. We are conscious a priori 
of our own permanent identity with regard to all repre- 
sentations that can ever belong to our knowledge, as 
forming a necessary condition of the possibility of all 



g6 Transcendental Analytic 

representations (because these could not represent any- 
thing in me, unless they belonged with everything else 
to one consciousness and could at least be connected 
within it). This principle stands firm a priori, and may 
be called the transcendental principle of the unity of 
all the manifold of our representations (therefore also 
of intuition). This unity of the manifold in one subject 
is synthetical ; the pure apperception therefore supplies 
us with a principle of the synthetical unity of [p. 117] 
the manifold in all possible intuitions. 1 

This synthetical unity, however, presupposes [p. 118] 
or involves a synthesis, and if that unity is necessary 
a priori, the synthesis also must be a priori. The tran- 
scendental unity of apperception therefore refers to the 
pure synthesis of imagination as a condition a priori of 

1 This point is of great importance and should be carefully considered. 
All representations have a necessary relation to some possible empirical con- 
sciousness, for if they did not possess that relation, and if it were entirely im- 
possible to become conscious of them, this would be the same as if they did 
not exist. All empirical consciousness has a necessary relation to a transcen- 
dental consciousness, which precedes all single experiences, namely, the con- 
sciousness of my own self as the original apperception. It is absolutely 
necessary therefore that in my knowledge all consciousness should belong 
to one consciousness of my own self. Here we have a synthetical unity of 
the manifold (consciousness) which can be known a priori, and which may 
thus supply a foundation for synthetical propositions a priori concerning pure 
thinking in the same way as space and time supply a foundation for syn- 
thetical propositions which concern the form of mere intuition. 

The synthetical proposition that the different kinds of empirical conscious- 
ness must be connected in one self-consciousness, is the very first and syn- 
thetical foundation of all our thinking. It should be remembered that the 
mere representation of the Ego in reference to all other representations (the 
collective unity of which would be impossible without it) constitutes our 
transcendental consciousness. It does not matter whether that representation 
is clear (empirical consciousness) or confused, not even whether it is real; 
but the possibility of the logical form of all knowledge rests necessarily on the 
relation to this apperception as a faculty. 



Transcendental A?ialytic 97 

the possibility of the manifold being united in one 
knowledge. Now there can take place a priori the pro- 
ductive synthesis of imagination only, because the re- 
productive rests on conditions of experience. The 
principle therefore of the necessary unity of the pure 
(productive) synthesis of imagination, before all apper- 
ception, constitutes the ground of the possibility of all 
knowledge, nay, of all experience. 

The synthesis of the manifold in imagination is called 
transcendental, if, without reference to the difference of 
intuitions, it affects only the a priori conjunction of the 
manifold ; and the unity of that synthesis is called tran- 
scendental if, with reference to the original unity of ap- 
perception, it is represented as a priori necessary. As the 
possibility of all knowledge depends on the unity of that 
apperception, it follows that the transcendental unity 
of the synthesis of imagination is the pure form of all 
possible knowledge through which therefore all objects of 
possible experience must be represented a priori. 

This unity of apperception with reference to [p. 119] 
the synthesis of imagination is the understanding, and 
the same unity with reference to the transcendental 
synthesis of the imagination, the pure understanding. 
It must be admitted therefore that there exist in the 
understanding pure forms of knowledge a priori, which 
contain the necessary unity of the pure synthesis of the 
imagination in reference to all possible phenomena. 
These are the categories, that is, the pure concepts 
of the understanding. The empirical faculty of know- 
ledge of man contains therefore by necessity an under- 
standing which refers to all objects of the senses, 
though by intuition only, and by its synthesis through 



98 Transcendental Analytic 

imagination, and all phenomena, as data of a possible 
experience, must conform to that understanding;. As 
this relation of phenomena to a possible experience is 
likewise necessary, (because, without it, we should receive 
no knowledge through them, and they would not in the 
least concern us), it follows that the pure understanding 
constitutes by the means of the categories a formal and 
synthetical principle of all experience, and that phenomena 
have thus a necessary relation to the understanding. 

We shall now try to place the necessary connection of 
the understanding with the phenomena by means of the 
categories more clearly before the reader, by beginning 
with the beginning, namely, with the empirical. 

The first that is given us is the phenomenon, [p. 120] 
which, if connected with consciousness, is called perception. 
(Without its relation to an at least possible consciousness, 
the phenomenon could never become to us an object of 
knowledge. It w r ould therefore be nothing to us ; and 
because it has no objective reality in itself, but exists only 
in being known, it would be nothing altogether.) As every 
phenomenon contains a manifold, and different percep- 
tions are found in the mind singly and scattered, a con- 
nection of them is necessary, such as they cannot have in 
the senses by themselves. There exists therefore in us an 
active power for the synthesis of the manifold which we 
call imagination, and the function of which, as applied 
to perceptions, I call apprehension} This imagination 

1 It has hardly struck any psychologist that this imagination is a necessary 
ingredient of perception. This was partly owing to their confining this faculty 
to reproduction, partly to our belief that the senses do not only give us im- 
pressions, but compound them also for us, thus producing pictures of objects. 
This, however, beyond our receptivity of impressions, requires something 
more, namely, a function for their synthesis. 



Transcendental Analytic 99 

is meant to change the manifold of intuition into an im- 
age, it must therefore first receive the impressions into 
its activity, which I call to apprehend. 

It must be clear, however, that even this appre- [p. 121] 
hension of the manifold could not alone produce a cohe- 
rence of impressions or an image, without some subjective 
power of calling one perception from which the mind has 
gone over to another back to that which follows, and thus 
forming whole series of perceptions. This is the repro- 
ductive faculty of imagination which is and can be em- 
pirical only. 

If representations, as they happen to meet with one 
another, could reproduce each other at haphazard, they 
would have no definite coherence, but would form irregu- 
lar agglomerations only, and never produce knowledge. 
It is necessary therefore that their reproduction should be 
subject to a rule by which one representation connects 
itself in imagination with a second and not with a third. 
It is this subjective and empirical ground of reproduction 
according to rules, which is called the association of repre- 
sentations. 

If this unity of association did not possess an objective 
foundation also, which makes it impossible that phenomena 
should be apprehended by imagination in any other way 
but under the condition of a possible synthetical unity of 
that apprehension, it would be a mere accident that phe- 
nomena lend themselves to a certain connection in human 
knowledge. Though we might have the power of asso- 
ciating perceptions, it would still be a matter of [p. 122] 
uncertainty and chance whether they themselves are asso- 
ciable ; and, in case they should not be so, a number of 
perceptions, nay, the whole of our sensibility, might possi- 



IOO Transcendental Analytic 

bly contain a great deal of empirical consciousness, but in 
a separate state, nay, without belonging to the one con- 
sciousness of myself, which, however, is impossible. Only 
by ascribing all perceptions to one consciousness (the origi- 
nal apperception) can I say of all of them that I am con- 
scious of them. It must be therefore an objective ground, 
that is, one that can be understood as existing a piiori, 
and before all empirical laws of imagination, on which 
alone the possibility, nay, even the necessity of a law can 
rest, which pervades all phenomena, and which makes us 
look upon them all, without exception, as data of the 
senses, associable by themselves, and subject to general 
rules of a permanent connection in their reproduction. 
This objective ground of all association of phenomena I 
call their affinity, and this can nowhere be found except 
in the principle of the unity of apperception applied to all 
knowledge which is to belong to me. According to it 
all phenomena, without exception, must so enter into the 
mind or be apprehended as to agree with the unity of 
apperception. This, without a synthetical unity in their 
connection, which is therefore necessary objectively also, 
would be impossible. 

We have thus seen that the objective unity [p. 123] 
of all (empirical) consciousness in one consciousness (that 
of the original apperception) is the necessary condition 
even of all possible perception, while the affinity of all 
phenomena (near or remote) is a necessary consequence of 
a synthesis in imagination which is a priori founded on 
rules. 

Imagination is therefore likewise the power of a synthe- 
sis a priori which is the reason why we called it produc- 
tive imagination, and so far as this aims at nothing but 



Transcendental Analytic 101 

the necessary unity in the synthesis of all the manifold in 
phenomena, it may be called the transcendental function 
of imagination. However strange therefore it may appear 
at first, it must nevertheless have become clear by this 
time that the affinity of phenomena and with it their asso- 
ciation, and through that, lastly, their reproduction also 
according to laws, that is, the whole of our experience, 
becomes possible only by means of that transcendental 
function of imagination, without which no concepts of 
objects could ever come together in one experience. 

It is the permanent and unchanging Ego (or pure ap- 
perception) which forms the correlative of all our repre- 
sentations, if we are to become conscious of them, and all 
consciousness belongs quite as much to such an all-em- 
bracing pure apperception as all sensuous intuitions be- 
longs, as a representation, to a pure internal [p. 124] 
intuition, namely, time. This apperception it is which 
must be added to pure imagination, in order to render 
its function intellectual. For by itself, the synthesis of 
imagination, though carried out a priori, is always sensu- 
ous, and only connects the manifold as it appears in intui- 
tion, for instance, the shape of a triangle. But when the 
manifold is brought into relation with the unity of apper- 
ception, concepts which belong to the understanding be- 
come possible, but only as related to sensuous intuition 
through imagination. 

We have therefore a pure imagination as one of the 
fundamental faculties of the human soul, on which all 
knowledge a priori depends. Through it we bring the 
manifold of intuition on one side in connection with the 
condition of the necessary unity of pure apperception on 
the other. These two extreme ends, sense and under- 



102 Transcendental Analytic 

standing, must be brought into contact with each other 
by means of the transcendental function of imagination, 
because, without it, the senses might give us phenomena, 
but no objects of empirical knowledge, therefore no expe- 
rience. Real experience, which is made up of apprehen- 
sion, association (reproduction), and lastly recognition of 
phenomena, contains in this last and highest [p. 125] 
(among the purely empirical elements of experience) con- 
cepts, which render possible the formal unity of experi- 
ence, and with it, all objective validity (truth) of empirical 
knowledge. These grounds for the recognition of the 
manifold, so far as they concern the form only of expe- 
rience in general, are our categories. On them is founded 
the whole formal unity in the synthesis of imagination 
and, through it, of 1 the whole empirical use of them (in 
recognition, reproduction, association, and apprehension) 
down to the very phenomena, because it is only by means 
of those elements of knowledge that the phenomena can 
belong to our consciousness and therefore to ourselves. 

It is we therefore who carry into the phenomena which 
we call nature, order and regularity, nay, we should never 
find them in nature, if we ourselves, or the nature of our 
mind, had not originally placed them there. For the 
unity of nature is meant to be a necessary and a priori 
certain unity in the connection of all phenomena. And 
how should we a priori have arrived at such a synthetical 
unity, if the subjective grounds of such unity were not 
contained a priori in the original sources of our know- 
ledge, and if those subjective conditions did not at the 
same time possess objective validity, as being the grounds 

1 Of may be omitted, if we read alter empirischer Gebrauch. 



Transcende7ital Analytic 103 

on which alone an object becomes possible in [p. 126] 
our experience ? 

We have before given various definitions of the under- 
standing, by calling it the spontaneity of knowledge (as 
opposed to the receptivity of the senses), or the faculty 
of thinking, or the faculty of concepts or of judgments ; 
all of these explanations, if more closely ex'amined, coming 
to the same. We may now characterise it as the faculty 
of rides. This characteristic is more significant, and ap- 
proaches nearer to the essence of the understanding. 
The senses give us forms (of intuition), the understanding 
rules, being always busy to examine phenomena, in order 
to discover in them some kind of rule. Rules, so far as 
they are objective (therefore necessarily inherent in our 
knowledge of an object), are called laws. Although expe- 
rience teaches us many laws, yet these are only particular 
determinations of higher laws, the highest of them, to 
which all others are subject, springing a priori from the 
understanding ; not being derived from experience, but, 
on the contrary, imparting to the phenomena their regu- 
larity, and thus making experience possible. The under- 
standing therefore is not only a power of making rules 
by a comparison of phenomena, it is itself the lawgiver of 
nature, and without the understanding nature, that is, a 
synthetical unity of the manifold of phenomena, [p. 127] 
according to rules, would be nowhere to be found, because 
phenomena, as such, cannot exist without us, but exist in 
our sensibility only. This sensibility, as an object of our 
knowledge in any experience, with everything it may con- 
tain, is possible only in the unity of apperception, which 
unity of apperception is transcendental ground of the 
necessary order of all phenomena in an experience. The 



104 Transcendental Analytic 

same unity of apperception with reference to the mani- 
fold of representations (so as to determine it out of one) 1 
forms what we call the rule, and the faculty of these rules 
I call the understanding. As possible experience there- 
fore, all phenomena depend in the same way a priori on 
the understanding, and receive their formal possibility 
from it as, when looked upon as mere intuitions, they 
depend on sensibility, and become possible through it, so 
far as their form is concerned. 

However exaggerated therefore and absurd it may 
sound, that the understanding is itself the source of the 
laws of nature, and of its formal unity, such a statement 
is nevertheless correct and in accordance with experience. 
It is quite true, no doubt, that empirical laws, as such, 
cannot derive their origin from the pure understanding, 
as little as the infinite manifoldness of phenomena cguld 
be sufficiently comprehended through the pure form of 
sensuous intuition. But all empirical laws are only par- 
ticular determinations of the pure laws of the [p. 128] 
understanding, under which and according to which the 
former become possible, and phenomena assume a regular 
form, quite as much as all phenomena, in spite of the 
variety of their empirical form, must always submit to the 
conditions of the pure form of sensibility. 

The pure understanding is therefore in the categories 
the law of the synthetical unity of all phenomena, and 
thus makes experience, so far as its form is concerned, for 
the first time possible. This, and no more than this, we 
were called upon to prove in the transcendental deduction 
of the categories, namely, to make the relation of the 

1 That is, out of one, or out of the unity of apperception. 



Traiisce7idcntal Analytic 105 

understanding to our sensibility, and through it to all 
objects of experience, that is the objective validity of the 
pure concepts a priori of the understanding, conceivable, 
and thus to establish their origin and their truth. 



SUMMARY REPRESENTATION 

OF THE CORRECTNESS AND OF THE ONLY POSSIBILITY OF 
THIS DEDUCTION OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF THE UNDER- 
STANDING 

If the objects with which our knowledge has to deal 
were things by themselves, we could have no concepts a 
priori of them. For where should we take them ? If we 
took them from the object (without asking even the ques- 
tion, how that object could be known to us) our [p. 129] 
concepts would be empirical only, not concepts a- priori. 
If we took them from within ourselves, then that which 
is within us only, could not determine the nature of an 
object different from our representations, that is, supply 
a ground why there should be a thing to which something 
like what we have in. our thoughts really belongs, and 
why all this representation should not rather be altogether 
empty. But if, on the contrary, we have to deal with 
phenomena only, then it becomes not only possible, but 
necessary, that certain concepts a priori should precede 
our empirical knowledge of objects. For being phenom- 
ena, they form an object that is within us only, because a 
mere modification of our sensibility can never exist outside 
us. The very idea that all these phenomena, and there- 
fore all objects with which we have to deal, are altogether 
within me, or determinations of my own identical self, 



106 Transcendental Analytic 

implies by itself the necessity of a permanent unity of 
them in one and the same apperception. In that unity 
of a possible consciousness consists also the form of all 
knowledge of objects, by which the manifold is thought 
as belonging to one object. The manner therefore in 
which the manifold of sensuous representation (intuition) 
belongs to our consciousness, precedes all knowledge of 
an object, as its intellectual form, and constitutes a kind 
of formal a priori knowledge of all objects in general, if 
they are to be thought (categories). Their syn- [p. 130] 
thesis by means of pure imagination, and the unity of all 
representations with reference to the original appercep- 
tion, precede all empirical knowledge. Pure concepts of 
the understanding are therefore a priori possible, nay, 
with regard to experience, necessary, for this simple rea- 
son, because our knowledge has to deal with nothing but 
phenomena, the possibility of which depends on ourselves, 
and the connection and unity of which (in the repre- 
sentation of an object) can be found in ourselves only, as 
antecedent to all experience, nay, as first rendering all 
experience possible, so far as its form is concerned. On 
this ground, as the only possible one, our deduction of the 
categories has been carried out.] 



TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 

BOOK II 

ANALYTIC OF PRINCIPLES 

General logic is built up on a plan that coincides accu- 
rately with the division of the higher faculties of know- 
ledge. These are, Understanding, Judgment, and Reason. 
Logic therefore treats in its analytical portion of concepts^ 
judgments, and syllogisms corresponding with the func- 
tions and the order of the above-named faculties [p. 131] 
of the mind, which are generally comprehended under the 
vague name of the understanding. 

As formal logic takes no account of the contents of our 
knowledge (pure or empirical), but treats of the form of 
thought only (discursive knowledge), it may well contain 
in its analytical portion the canon of reason also, reason 
being, according to its form, subject to definite rules 
which, without reference to the particular nature of the 
knowledge to which they are applied, can be found out 
a priori by a mere analysis of the acts of reasoning into 
their component parts. 

Transcendental logic, being limited to a certain content, 
namely, to pure knowledge a priori, cannot follow general 
logic in this division ; for it is clear that the transcendental 
use of reason cannot be objectively valid, and cannot there- 
fore belong to the logic of truth, that is, to Analytic, but 
must be allowed to form a separate part of our scholastic 

107 



108 Transcendental Analytic 

system, as a logic of illusion, under the name of transcen- 
dental Dialectic. 

Understanding and judgment have therefore a canon 
of their objectively valid, and therefore true use in tran- 
scendental logic, and belong to its analytical portion. But 
reason, in its attempts to determine anything a priori with 
reference to objects, and to extend knowledge beyond the 
limits of possible experience, is altogether dialectical, and 
its illusory assertions have no place in a canon [p. 132] 
such as Analytic demands. 

Our Analytic of principles therefore will be merely a 
canon of the faculty of judgment, teaching it how to apply 
to phenomena the concepts of the understanding, which 
contain the condition of rules a priori. For this reason, 
and in order to indicate my purpose more clearly, I shall 
use the name of doctiine of the faculty of judgment, while 
treating of the real principles of the understanding. 

INTRODUCTION 

OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL FACULTY OF JUDGMENT IN 
GENERAL 

If the understanding is explained as the faculty of 
rules, the faculty of judgment consists in performing the 
subsumption under these rules, that is, in determining 
whether anything falls under a given rule {casus dates 
legis) or not. General logic contains no precepts for the 
faculty of judgment and cannot contain them. For as it 
takes no account of the contents of our knowledge, it has 
only to explain analytically the mere- form of knowledge 
in concepts, judgments, and syllogisms, and thus [p. 133] 
to establish formal rules for the proper employment of the 



Transcendental Analytic 109 

understanding. If it were to attempt to show in general 
how anything should be arranged under these rules, and 
how we should determine whether something falls under 
them or not, this could only take place by means of a new 
rule. This, because it is a new rule, requires a new pre- 
cept for the faculty of judgment, and we thus learn that, 
though the understanding is capable of being improved 
and instructed by means of rules, the faculty of judgment 
is a special talent which cannot be taught, but must be 
practised. This is what constitutes our so-called mother- 
wit, the absence of which cannot be remedied by any 
schooling. For although the teacher may offer, and as 
it were graft into a narrow understanding, plenty of rules 
borrowed from the experience of others, the faculty of 
using them rightly must belong to the pupil himself, and 
without that talent no precept that may be given is safe 
from abuse. 1 A physician, therefore, a judge, or [p. 134] 
a politician, may carry in his head many beautiful patho- 
logical, juridical, or political rules, nay, he may even be- 
come an accurate teacher of them, and he may yet in the 
application of these rules commit many a blunder, either 
because he is deficient in judgment, though not in under- 
standing, knowing the general in the abstract, but unable 
to determine whether a concrete case falls under it ; or, it 
may be, because his judgment has not been sufficiently 
trained by examples and practical experience. It is the 

1 Deficiency in the faculty of judgment is really what we call stupidity, and 
there is no remedy for that. An obtuse and narrow mind, deficient in nothing 
but a proper degree of understanding and correct concepts, may be improved 
by study, so far as to become even learned. But as even then there is often a 
deficiency of judgment (secunda Petri) we often meet with very learned men, 
who in handling their learning betray that original deficiency which can never 
be mended. 



no 



Transcendental Analytic 



one great advantage of examples that they sharpen the 
faculty of judgment, but they are apt to impair the accu- 
racy and precision of the understanding, because they 
fulfil but rarely the conditions of the rule quite adequately 
(as casus in terminis). Nay, they often weaken the effort 
of the understanding in comprehending rules according 
to their general adequacy, and independent of the special 
circumstances of experience, and accustom us to use those 
rules in the end as formulas rather than as principles. 
Examples may thus be called the go-cart of the judgment, 
which those who are deficient in that natural talent 1 can 
never do without. 

But although general logic can give no pre- [p. 135] 
cepts to the faculty of judgment, the case is quite differ- 
ent with transcendental logic, so that it even seems as if 
it were the proper business of the latter to correct and 
to establish by definite rules the faculty of the judgment 
in the use of the pure understanding. For as a doctrine 
and a means of enlarging the field of pure knowledge a 
priori for the benefit of the understanding, philosophy 
does not seem necessary, but rather hurtful, because, in 
spite of all attempts that have been hitherto made, hardly 
a single inch of ground has been gained by it. For criti- 
cal purposes, however, and in order to guard the faculty 
of judgment against mistakes {lapsus judicii) in its use of 
the few pure concepts of the understanding which we pos- 
sess, philosophy (though its benefits may be negative only) 
has to employ all the acuteness and penetration at its 
command. 

1 Desselben has been changed into derselben in later editions. Desselben, 
however, may be meant to refer to Urtheil, as contained in Urtheihkraft. 
The second edition has desselben. 



Transcendental Analytic 1 1 1 

What distinguishes transcendental philosophy is, that 
besides giving the rules (or rather the general condition 
of rules) which are contained in the pure concept of the 
understanding, it can at the same time indicate a priori 
the case to which each rule may be applied. The superi- 
ority which it enjoys in this respect over all other sciences, 
except mathematics, is due to this, that it treats of con- 
cepts which are meant to refer to their objects a priori, so 
that their objective validity cannot be proved [p. 136] 
a posteriori, because this would not affect their own 
peculiar dignity. It must show, on the contrary, by 
means of general but sufficient marks, the conditions 
under which objects can be given corresponding to those 
concepts ; otherwise these would be without any contents, 
mere logical forms, and not pure concepts of the under- 
standing. 

Our transcendental doctrine of the faculty of judgment 
will consist of two chapters. The first will treat of the 
sensuous condition under which alone pure concepts of 
the understanding can be used. This is what I call the 
schematism of the pure understanding. The second will 
treat of the synthetical judgments, which can be derived 
a priori under these conditions from pure concepts of the 
understanding, and on which all knowledge a priori de- 
pends. It will treat, therefore, of the principles of the 
pure understanding. 



THE 

TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE 

O 137] 

OF THE 

FACULTY OF JUDGMENT 

OR 

ANALYTIC OF PRINCIPLES 
CHAPTER I 

OF THE SCHEMATISM OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF THE 
UNDERSTANDING 

In comprehending any object under a concept, the 
representation of the former must be homogeneous 
with the latter, 1 that is, the concept must contain that 
which is represented in the object to be comprehended 
under it, for this is the only meaning of the expression 
that an object is comprehended under a concept. Thus, 
for instance, the empirical concept of a plate is homo- 
geneous with the pure geometrical concept of a circle, 
the roundness which is conceived in the first forming an 
object of intuition in the latter. 

Now it is clear that pure concepts of the understanding 
as compared with empirical or sensuous impressions in 
general, are entirely heterogeneous, and can never be met 

1 Read dem letzteren, as corrected by Rosenkranz, for der letzteren. 
112 



Transcendental Analytic 113 

with in any intuition. How then can the latter be com- 
prehended under the former, or how can the categories 
be applied to phenomena, as no one is likely to say that 
causality, for instance, could be seen through the senses, 
and was contained in the phenomenon? It is [p. 138] 
really this very natural and important question which 
renders a transcendental doctrine of the faculty of judg- 
ment necessary, in order to show how it is possible that 
any of the pure concepts of the understanding can be 
applied to phenomena. In all other sciences in which the 
concepts by which the object is thought in general are not 
so heterogeneous or different from those which represent 
it in concreto, and as it is given, there is no necessity to 
enter into any discussions as to the applicability of the 
former to the latter. 

In our case there must be some third thing homo- 
geneous on the one side with the category, and on the 
other with the phenomenon, to render the application of the 
former to the latter possible. This intermediate repre- 
sentation must be pure (free from all that is empirical) 
and yet intelligible on the one side, and sensuous on the 
other. Such a representation is the transcejidental schema. 

The concept of the understanding contains pure syn- 
thetical unity of the manifold in general. Time, as the 
formal condition of the manifold in the internal sense, 
consequently of the conjunction of all representations, 
contains a manifold a priori in pure intuition. A tran- 
scendental determination of time is so far homogeneous 
with the category (which constitutes its unity) that it is 
general and founded on a rule a priori ; and it is on the 
other hand so far homogeneous with the phe- [p. 139] 
nomenon, that time must be contained in every empirical 



H4 Transcendental Analytic 

representation of the manifold. The application of the 
category to phenomena becomes possible therefore by 
means of the transcendental determination of time, which, 
as a schema of the concepts of the understanding, allows 
the phenomena to be comprehended under the category. 

After what has been said in the deduction of the cate- 
gories, we hope that nobody will hesitate in answering the 
question whether these pure concepts of the understand- 
ing allow only of an empirical or also of a transcendental 
application, that is, whether, as conditions of a possible 
experience, they refer a priori to phenomena only, or 
whether, as conditions of the possibility of things in gen- 
eral, they may be extended to objects by themselves (with- 
out restriction to our sensibility). For there we saw that 
concepts are quite impossible, and cannot have any mean- 
ing unless there be an object given either to them or, at 
least, to some of the elements of which they consist, and 
that they can never refer to things by themselves (without 
regard as to whether and how things may be given to us). 
We likewise saw that the only way in which objects can 
be given to us, consists in a modification of our sensibility, 
and lastly, that pure concepts a pi'iori must contain, besides 
the function of the understanding in the category itself, 
formal conditions a priori of sensibility (particu- [p. 140] 
larly of the internal sense) which form the general condi- 
tion under which alone the category may be applied to 
any object. We shall call this formal and pure condition 
of sensibility, to which the concept of the understanding 
is restricted in its application, its schema ; and the function 
of the understanding in these schemata, the schematism of 
the pure understanding. 

The schema by itself is no doubt a product of the imagi- 



Transcendental Analytic 115 

nation only, but as the synthesis of the imagination does 
not aim at a single intuition, but at some kind of unity 
alone in the determination of sensibility, the schema ought 
to be distinguished from the image. Thus, if I place five 

points, one after the other , this is an image of the 

number five. If, on the contrary, I think of a number in 
general, whether it be five or a hundred, this thinking is 
rather the representation of a method of representing in 
one image a certain quantity (for instance a thousand) 
according to a certain concept, than the image itself, which, 
in the case of a thousand, I could hardly take in and com- 
pare with the concept. This representation of a general 
procedure of the imagination by which a concept receives 
its image, I call the schema of such concept. 

The fact is that our pure sensuous concepts do not 
depend on images of objects, but on schemata, [p. 141] 
No image of a triangle in general could ever be adequate 
to its concept. It would never attain to that generality of 
the concept, which makes it applicable to all triangles, 
whether right-angled, or acute-angled, or anything else, 
but would always be restricted to one portion only of the 
sphere of the concept. The schema of the triangle can 
exist nowhere but in thought, and is in fact a rule for 
the synthesis of imagination with respect to pure forms 
in space. Still less does an object of experience or its 
image ever cover the empirical concept, which always 
refers directly to the schema of imagination as a rule for 
the determination of our intuitions, according to a certain 
general concept. The concept of dog means a rule ac- 
cording to which my imagination can always draw a 
general outline of the figure of a four-footed animal, 
without being restricted to any particular figure supplied 



n6 Transcendental Analytic 

by experience or to any possible image which I may draw 
in the concrete. This schematism of our understanding 
applied to phenomena and their mere form is an art hid- 
den in the depth of the human soul, the true secrets of 
which we shall hardly ever be able to guess and reveal. 
So much only we can say, that the image is a product of 
the empirical faculty of the productive imagination, while 
the schema of sensuous concepts (such as of figures in 
space) is a product and so to say a monogram of [p. 142] 
the pure imagination a priori, through which and accord- 
ing to which images themselves become possible, though 
they are never fully adequate to the concept, and can be 
connected with it by means of their schema only. The 
schema of a pure concept of the understanding, on the 
contrary, is something which can never be made into an 
image ; for it is nothing but the pure synthesis determined 
by a rule of unity, according to concepts, a synthesis as 
expressed by the category, and represents a transcendental 
product of the imagination, a product which concerns the 
determination of the internal sense in general, under the 
conditions of its form (time), with reference to all repre- 
sentations, so far as these are meant to be joined a priori 
in one concept, according to the unity of apperception. 

Without dwelling any longer on a dry and tedious 
determination of all that is required for the transcem 
dental schemata of the pure concepts of the understand- 
ing in general, we shall proceed at once to represent them 
according to the order of the categories, and in connection 
with them. 

The pure image of all quantities {quanta) before the 
external sense, is space; that of all objects of the senses 
in general, time. The pure schema of quantity {qnan- 



Transcendental Aiialytic 117 

titas), however, as a concept of the understanding, is 
number, a representation which comprehends the succes- 
sive addition of one to one (homogeneous). Number 
therefore is nothing but the unity of the syn- [p. 143] 
thesis of the manifold (repetition) of a homogeneous 
intuition in general, I myself producing the time in the 
apprehension of the intuition. 

Reality is, in the pure concept of the understanding, 
that which corresponds to a sensation in general : that, 
therefore, the concept of which indicates by itself being 
(in time), while negation is that the concept of which rep- 
resents not-being (in time). The opposition of the two 
takes place therefore by a distinction of one and the 
same time, as either filled or empty. As time is only 
the form of intuition, that is, of objects as phenomena, 
that which in the phenomena corresponds to sensation, 
constitutes the transcendental matter of all objects, as 
things by themselves (reality, Sachheit). Every sensa- 
tion, however, has a degree of quantity by which it can 
fill the same time (that is, the internal sense, with refer- 
ence to the same representation of an object), more or less, 
till it vanishes into nothing (equal to nought or negation). 
There exists, therefore, a relation and connection, or rather 
a transition from reality to negation, which makes every 
reality representable as a quantum ; and the schema of a 
reality, as the quantity of something which fills time, is 
this very continuous and uniform production of reality in 
time ; while we either descend from the sensation which 
has a certain degree, to its vanishing in time, or ascend 
from the negation of sensation to some quantity of it. 

The schema of substance is the permanence [p. 144] 
of the real in time, that is, the representation of it as a 



n8 Transcendental Analytic 

substratum for the empirical determination of time in 
general, which therefore remains while everything else 
changes. (It is not time that passes, but the existence of 
the changeable passes in time. What corresponds there- 
fore in the phenomena to time, which in itself is unchange- 
able and permanent, is the unchangeable in existence, that 
is, substance ; and it is only in it that the succession and 
the coexistence of phenomena can be determined according 
to time.) 

The schema of cause and of the causality of a thing in 
general is the real which, when once supposed to exist, is 
always followed by something else. It consists therefore 
in the succession of the manifold, in so far as that succes- 
sion is subject to a rule. 

The schema of community (reciprocal action) or of the 
reciprocal causality of substances, in respect to their acci- 
dents, is the coexistence, according to a general rule, of 
the determinations of the one with those of the other. 

The schema of possibility is the agreement of the syn- 
thesis of different representations with the conditions of 
time in general, as, for instance, when opposites cannot 
exist at the same time in the same thing, but only one 
after the other. It is therefore the determination of the 
representation of a thing at any time whatsoever. 

The schema of reality is existence at a given time. [p. 145] 

The schema of necessity is the existence of an object at 
all times. 

It is clear, therefore, if we examine all the categories, 
that the schema of quantity contains and represents the 
production (synthesis) of time itself in the successive 
apprehension of an object ; the schema of quality, the 
synthesis of sensation (perception) with the representation 



Transcendental Analytic 119 

of time or the filling-up of time ; the schema of relation, 
the relation of perceptions to each other at all times (that 
is, according to a rule which determines time) ; lastly, the 
schema of modality and its categories, time itself as the 
correlative of the determination of an object as to whether 
and how it belongs to time. The schemata therefore are 
nothing but determinations of time a priori according to 
rules, and these, as applied to all possible objects, refer in the 
order of the categories to the series of time, the contents of 
time, the order of time, and lastly, the comprehension of time. 

We have thus seen that the schematism of the under- 
standing, by means of a transcendental synthesis of 
imagination, amounts to nothing else but to the unity of 
the manifold in the intuition of the internal sense, and 
therefore indirectly to the unity of apperception, as an 
active function corresponding to the internal sense (as re- 
ceptive). These schemata therefore of the pure concepts 
of the understanding are the true and only con- [p. 146] 
ditions by which these concepts can gain a relation to 
objects, that is, a significance, and the categories are thus 
in the end of no other but a possible empirical use, serv- 
ing only, on account of an a priori necessary unity (the 
necessary connection of all consciousness in one original 
apperception) to subject all phenomena to general rules of 
synthesis, and thus to render them capable of a general 
connection in experience. 

All our knowledge is contained within this whole of 
possible experience, and transcendental truth, which pre- 
cedes all empirical truth and renders it possible, consists 
in general relation of it to that experience. 

But although the schemata of sensibility serve thus to 
realise the categories, it must strike everybody that they 



i2o Transcendental Analytic 

at the same time restrict them, that is, limit them by con- 
ditions foreign to the understanding and belonging to sen- 
sibility. Hence the schema is really the phenomenon, or 
the sensuous concept of an object in agreement with the 
category (numerus est quant it as pliaoiomcnon, sensatio 
realitas phaenomenon, constans et perdurabile rcrum sub- 
stantia phaenomenon — aeternitas necessitas pJiacnomcnon, 
etc.). If we omit a restrictive condition, it would seem 
that we amplify a formerly limited concept, and that 
therefore the categories in their pure meaning, [p. 147] 
free from all conditions of sensibility, should be valid of 
things in general, as they arc, while their schemata rep- 
resent them only as they appear, so that these categories 
might claim a far more extended power, independent of 
all schemata. And in truth we must allow to these pure 
concepts of the understanding, apart from all sensuous 
conditions, a certain significance, though a logical one 
only, with regard to the mere unity of representations 
produced by them, although these representations have 
no object and therefore no meaning that could give us 
a concept of an object. Thus substance, if we leave out 
the sensuous condition of permanence, would mean noth- 
ing but a something that may be conceived as a subject, 
without being the predicate of anything else. Of such 
a representation we can make nothing, because it does 
not teach us how that thing is determined which is thus 
to be considered as the first subject. Categories, there- 
fore, without schemata are functions only of the under- 
standing necessary for concepts, but do not themselves 
represent any object. This character is given to them 
by sensibility only, which realises the understanding by, 
at the same time, restricting it. 



THE 

TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE 

[ P . i 4 8] 

OF THE 

FACULTY OF JUDGMENT 

OR 

ANALYTIC OF PRINCIPLES 
CHAPTER II 

SYSTEM OF ALL PRINCIPLES OF THE PURE UNDERSTANDING 

We have in the preceding chapter considered the tran- 
scendental faculty of judgment with reference to those 
general conditions only under which it is justified in 
using the pure concepts of the understanding for syn- 
thetical judgments. It now becomes our duty to repre- 
sent systematically those judgments which, under that 
critical provision, the understanding, can really produce 
a priori. For this purpose our table of categories will 
be without doubt our natural and best guide. For it is 
the relation of the categories to all possible experience 
which must constitute all pure a priori knowledge of the 
understanding ; and their relation to sensibility in general 
will therefore exhibit completely and systematically all 



I2 2 Transcendental Analytic 

the transcendental principles of the use of the under- 
standing. 1 

Principles a priori are so called, not only because they 
contain the grounds for other judgments, but also because 
they themselves are not founded on higher and more gen- 
eral kinds of knowledge. This peculiarity, however, does 
not enable them to dispense with every kind of proof ; for 
although this could not be given objectively, as [p. 149] 
all knowledge of any object really rests on it, this does 
not prevent us from attempting to produce a proof drawn 
from the subjective sources of the possibility of a know- 
ledge of the object in general ; nay, it may be necessary 
to do so, because, without it, our assertion might be sus- 
pected of being purely gratuitous. 

We shall treat, however, of those principles only which 
relate to the categories. We shall have nothing to do 
with the principles of transcendental aesthetic, according 
to which space and time are the conditions of the pos- 
sibility of all things as phenomena, nor with the limita- 
tion of those principles, prohibiting their application to 
things by themselves. Mathematical principles also do 
not belong to this part of our discussion, because they 
are derived from intuition, and not from the pure con- 
cept of the understanding. As they are, however, syn- 
thetical judgments a priori, their possibility will have to. 
be discussed, not in order to prove their correctness and 
apodictic certainty, which would be unnecessary, but in 
order to make the possibility of such self-evident know- 
ledge a priori conceivable and intelligible. 

We shall also have to speak of the principle of analyti- 

1 The insertion of man, as suggested by Rosenkranz, is impossible. 



Transce?tdental Analytic 123 

cal as opposed to synthetical judgments, the [p. 150] 
latter being the proper subject of our enquiries, because 
this very opposition frees the theory of the latter from 
all misunderstandings, and places them clearly before 
us in their own peculiar character. 

SYSTEM OF THE PRINCIPLES OF THE PURE 
UNDERSTANDING 

Section I 

Of the Highest Principle of all Analytical Judgments 

Whatever the object of our knowledge may be, and 
whatever the relation between our knowledge and its 
object, it must always submit to that general, though only 
negative condition of all our judgments, that they do not 
contradict themselves ; otherwise these judgments, without 
any reference to their object, are in themselves nothing. 
But although there may be no contradiction in our judg- 
ment, it may nevertheless connect concepts in a manner 
not warranted by the object, or without there being any 
ground, whether a priori or a posteriori, to confirm such a 
judgment. A judgment may therefore be false or ground- 
less, though in itself it is free from all contradiction. 

The proposition that no subject can have a [p. 151] 
predicate which contradicts it, is called the principle of 
contradiction. It is a general though only negative crite- 
rion of all truth, and belongs to logic only, because it 
applies to knowledge as knowledge only, without reference 
to its object, and simply declares that such contradiction 
would entirely destroy and annihilate it. 

Nevertheless, a positive use also may be made of that 



124 Transcendental Analytic 

principle, not only in order to banish falsehood and error, 
so far as they arise from contradiction, but also in order 
to discover truth. For in an analytical judgment, whether 
negative or affirmative, its truth can always be sufficiently 
tested by the principle of contradiction, because the oppo- 
site of that which exists and is thought as a concept in 
our knowledge of an object, is always rightly negatived, 
while the concept itself is necessarily affirmed of it, for the 
simple reason that its opposite would be in contradiction 
with the object. 

It must therefore be admitted that the principle of con- 
tradiction is the general and altogether sufficient principle 
of all analytical knowledge, though beyond this its au- 
thority and utility, as a sufficient criterion of truth, must 
not be allowed to extend. For the fact that no knowledge 
can run counter to that principle, without destroying 
itself, makes it no doubt a conditio sine qua non, [p. 152] 
but never the determining reason of the truth of our 
knowledge. Now, as in our present enquiry we are 
chiefly concerned with the synthetical part of our know- 
ledge, we must no doubt take great care never to offend 
against that inviolable principle, but we ought never to 
expect from it any help with regard to the truth of this 
kind of knowledge. 

There is, however, a formula of this famous principle — 
a principle merely formal and void of all contents — which 
contains a synthesis that has been mixed up with it from 
mere carelessness and without any real necessity. This 
formula is : It is impossible that anything should be and at 
the same time not be. Here, first of all, the apodictic cer- 
tainty expressed by the word impossible is added unnec- 
essarily, because it is understood by itself from the nature 



Trcuiscendental Analytic 125 

of the proposition ; secondly, the proposition is affected 
by the condition of time, and says, as it were, something 
= A, which is something = B, cannot be at the same 
time not-B, but it can very well be both (B and not-B) in 
succession. For instance, a man who is young cannot be 
at the same time old, but the same man may very well 
be young at one time and not young, that is, old, at 
another. The principle of contradiction, however, as a 
purely logical principle, must not be limited in its appli- 
cation by time; and the before-mentioned for- [p. 153] 
mula runs therefore counter to its very nature. The mis- 
understanding arises from our first separating one predi- 
cate of an object from its concept, and by our afterwards 
joining its opposite with that predicate, which gives us 
a contradiction, not with the subject, but with its predicate 
only which was synthetically connected with it, and this 
again only on condition that the first and second predicate 
have both been applied at the same time. If I want to 
say that a man who is unlearned is not learned, I must 
add the condition 'at the same time,' for a man who is 
unlearned at one time may very well be learned at an- 
other. But if I say no unlearned man is learned, then 
the proposition is analytical, because the characteristic 
(unlearnedness) forms part now of the concept of the 
subject, so that the negative proposition becomes evident 
directly from the principle of contradiction, and without 
the necessity of adding the condition, 'at the same time.' 
This is the reason why I have so altered the wording of 
that formula that it displays at once the nature of an 
analytical proposition. 



126 Transcendental Analytic 

SYSTEM OF THE PRINCIPLES OF THE PURE [p. 154] 
UNDERSTANDING 

Section II 

Of the Highest Principle of all Synthetical Judgments 

The explanation of the possibility of synthetical judg- 
ments is a subject of which general logic "knows nothing, 
not even its name, while in a transcendental logic it is the 
most important task of all, nay, even the only one, when 
we have to consider the possibility of synthetical judg- 
ments a priori, their conditions, and the extent of their 
validity. For when that task is accomplished, the object 
of transcendental logic, namely, to determine the extent 
and limits of the pure understanding, will have been fully 
attained. 

In forming an analytical judgment I remain within a 
given concept, while predicating something of it. If what 
I predicate is affirmative, I only predicate of that concept 
what is already contained in it; if it is negative, I only 
exclude from it the opposite of it. In forming synthet- 
ical judgments, on the contrary, I have to go beyond a 
given concept, in order to bring something together with 
it, which is totally different from what is contained in it. 
Here we have neither the relation of identity [p. 155] 
nor of contradiction, and nothing in the judgment itself 
by which we can discover its truth or its falsehood. 

Granted, therefore, that we must go beyond a given 
concept in order to compare it synthetically with another, 
something else is necessary in which, as in a third, the 
synthesis of two concepts becomes possible. What, then, 



Transcendental Analytic 127 

is that third ? What is the medium of all synthetical 
judgments? It can only be that in which all our concepts 
are contained, namely, the internal sense and its a priori 
form, time. The synthesis of representations depends on 
imagination, but their synthetical unity, which is neces- 
sary for forming a judgment, depends on the unity of 
apperception. It is here therefore that the possibility of 
synthetical judgments, and (as all the three contain the 
sources of representations a priori) the possibility of pure 
synthetical judgments also, will have to be discovered; 
nay, they will on these grounds be necessary, if any 
knowledge of objects is to be obtained that rests entirely 
on a synthesis of representations. 

If knowledge is to have any objective reality, that is to 
say, if it is to refer to an object, and receive by means of 
it any sense and meaning, the object must necessarily be 
given in some way or other. Without that all concepts 
are empty. We have thought in them, but we have not, 
by thus thinking, arrived at any knowledge. We have 
only played with representations. To give an object, if 
this is not meant again as mediate only, but if [p. 156] 
it means to represent something immediately in intuition, 
is nothing else but to refer the representation of the 
object to experience (real or possible). Even space and 
time, however pure these concepts may be of all that is 
empirical, and however certain it is that they are repre- 
sented in the mind entirely a priori, would lack neverthe- 
less all objective validity, all sense and meaning, if we 
could not show the necessity of their use with reference 
to all objects of experience. Nay, their representation is 
is a pure schema, always referring to that reproductive 
imagination which calls up the objects of experience, 



I2 8 Transcendental Analytic 

without which objects would be meaningless. The same 
applies to all concepts without any distinction. 

It is therefore the possibility of experience which alone 
gives objective reality to all our knowledge a priori. 
Experience, however, depends on the synthetical unity 
of phenomena, that is, on a synthesis according to con- 
cepts of the object of phenomena in general. Without 
it, it would not even be knowledge, but only a rhapsody 
of perceptions, which would never grow into a connected 
text according to the rules of an altogether coherent 
(possible) consciousness, nor into a transcendental and 
necessary unity of apperception. Experience depends 
therefore on a priori principles of its form, that is, on 
general rules of unity in the synthesis of phe- [p. 157] 
nomena, and the objective reality of these (rules) can 
always be shown by their being the necessary conditions 
in all experience ; nay, even in the possibility of all 
experience. Without such a relation synthetical proposi- 
tions a priori would be quite impossible, because they 
have no third medium, that is, no object in which the 
synthetical unity of their concepts could prove their 
objective reality. 

Although we know therefore a great deal a priori in 
synthetical judgments with reference to space in general, 
or to the figures which productive imagination traces in 
it, without requiring for it any experience, this our know- 
ledge would nevertheless be nothing but a playing with 
the cobwebs of our brain, if space were not to be con- 
sidered as the condition of phenomena which supply the 
material for external experience. Those pure synthetical 
judgments therefore refer always, though mediately only, 
to possible experience, or rather to the possibility of 



Transcendental Analytic 129 

experience, on which alone the objective validity of their 
synthesis is founded. 

As therefore experience, being an empirical synthesis, 
is in its possibility the only kind of knowledge that im- 
parts reality to every other synthesis, this other synthesis, 
as knowledge a priori, possesses truth (agreement with 
its object) on this condition only, that it contains nothing 
beyond what is necessary for the synthetical [p. 158] 
unity of experience in general. 

The highest principle of all synthetical judgments is 
therefore this, that every object is subject to the necessary 
conditions of a synthetical unity of the manifold of intui- 
tion in a possible experience. 

Thus synthetical judgments a priori are possible, if we 
refer the formal conditions of intuition a priori, the syn- 
thesis of imagination, and the necessary unity of it in a 
transcendental apperception, to a possible knowledge in 
general, given in experience, and if we say that the con- 
ditions of the possibility of experience in general are at 
the same time conditions of the possibility of the objects 
of experience themselves, and thus possess objective valid- 
ity in a synthetical judgment a priori. 

SYSTEM OF THE PRINCIPLES OF THE PURE 
UNDERSTANDING 

Section III 

Systematical Representation of all Synthetical Principles 
of the Understanding 

That there should be principles at all is entirely due to 
the pure understanding, which is not only the faculty of 
rules in regard to all that happens, but itself the source 



!30 Transcendental Analytic 

of principles, according to which everything LP- J 59] 
(that can become an object to us) is necessarily subject 
to rules, because, without such, phenomena would never 
become objects corresponding to knowledge. Even laws 
of nature, if they are considered as principles of the 
empirical use of the understanding, carry with them a 
character of necessity, and thus lead to the supposition 
that they rest on grounds which are valid a priori and 
before all experience. Nay, all laws of nature without 
distinction are subject to higher principles of the under- 
standing, which they apply to particular cases of experi- 
ence. They alone therefore supply the concept which 
contains the condition, and, as it were, the exponent of a 
rule in general, while experience furnishes each case to 
which the general rule applies. 

There can hardly be any danger of our mistaking 
purely empirical principles for principles of the pure 
understanding or vice versa, for the character of neces- 
sity which distinguishes the concepts of the pure under- 
standing, and the absence of which can easily be perceived 
in every empirical proposition, however general it may 
seem, will always prevent their confusion. There are, 
however, pure principles a priori which I should not like 
to ascribe to the pure understanding, because they are 
derived, not from pure concepts, but from pure intuitions 
(although by means of the understanding); the [p. 160] 
understanding being the faculty of the concepts. We 
find such principles in mathematics, but their application 
to experience, and therefore their objective validity, nay, 
even the possibility of such synthetical knowledge a 
priori (the deduction thereof) rests always on the pure 
understanding. 



Transcendental Analytic 131 

Hence my principles will not include the principles of 
mathematics, but they will include those on which the 
possibility and objective validity a priori of those mathe- 
matical principles are founded, and which consequently 
are to be looked upon as the source of those principles, 
proceeding from concepts to intuitions, and not from 
intuitions to concepts. 

When the pure concepts of the understanding are 
applied to every possible experience, their synthesis is 
either mathematical or dynamical, for it is directed partly 
to the intuition of a phenomenon only, partly to its exist- 
ence. The conditions a priori of intuition are absolutely 
necessary w T ith regard to every possible experience, while 
the conditions of the existence of the object of a possible 
empirical intuition are in themselves accidental only. 
The principles of the mathematical use of the categories 
will therefore be absolutely necessary, that is apodictic, 
while those of their dynamical use, though likewise pos- 
sessing the character of necessity a priori, can possess 
such a character subject only to the condition of empirical 
thought in experience, that is mediately and indirectly, 
and cannot therefore claim that immediate evidence which 
belongs to the former, although their certainty with re- 
gard to experience in general remains unaffected by this. 
Of this we shall be better qualified to judge at [p. 161] 
the conclusion of this system of principles. 

Our table of categories gives us naturally the best in- 
structions for drawing up a table of principles, because 
these are nothing but rules for the objective use of the 
former. 



132 



Transcendental Analytic 



All principles of the pure understanding are there- 
fore, 

I 
Axioms of Intuition. 



II 

Anticipations of 
Perception. 


IV 

Postulates of Empirical 
Thought in General. 


Ill 

Analogies of 
Experience. 



I have chosen these names not unadvisedly, so that the 
difference with regard to the evidence and the application 
of those principles should not be overlooked. We shall 
soon see that, both with regard to the evidence and the 
a priori determination of phenomena according to the cat- 
egories of quantity and quality (if we attend to the form 
of them only) their principles differ considerably from 
those of the other two classes, inasmuch as the [p. 162] 
former are capable of an intuitive, the latter of a merely 
discursive, though both of a complete certainty. I shall 
therefore call the former mathematical, the latter dynami- 
cal principles. 1 It should be observed, however, that I do 
not speak here either of the principles of mathematics, or 
of those of general physical dynamics, but only of the 
principles of the pure understanding in relation to the 
internal sense (without any regard to the actual represen- 
tations given in it). It is these through which the former 
become possible, and I have given them their name, more 
on account of their application than of their contents. I 
shall now proceed to consider them in the same order in 
which they stand in the table. 

1 Here follows in the Second Edition, Supplement XV. 



Transcendental Analytic 133 

I 
[OF THE AXIOMS OF INTUITION 1 

Principle of the Pure Understanding 

'All Phenomena are, with reference to their intuition, extensive 
quantities '] 

I call an extensive quantity that in which the represen- 
tation of the whole is rendered possible by the representa- 
tion of its parts, and therefore necessarily preceded by it. 
I cannot represent to myself any line, however small it 
may be, without drawing it in thought, that is, without 
producing all its parts one after the other, start- [p. 163] 
ing from a given point, and thus, first of all, drawing its 
intuition. The same applies to every, even the smallest 
portion of time. I can only think in it the successive prog- 
ress from one moment to another, thus producing in the 
end, by all portions of time and their addition, a definite 
quantity of time. As in all phenomena pure intuition is 
either space or time, every phenomenon, as an intuition, 
must be an extensive quantity, because it can be known 
in apprehension by a successive synthesis only (of part 
with part). All phenomena therefore, when perceived in 
intuition, are aggregates (collections) of previously given 
parts, which is not the case with every kind of quantities, 
but with those only which are represented to us and 
apprehended as extensive. 

On this successive synthesis of productive imagination 
in elaborating figures are founded the mathematics of ex- 
tension with their axioms (geometry), containing the con- 

1 Here follows, in the later Editions, Supplement XVI. 



134 



Transcendental Analytic 



ditions of sensuous intuition a priori, under which alone 
the schema of a pure concept of an external phenomenal 
appearance can be produced ; for instance, between two 
points one straight line only is possible, or two straight 
lines cannot enclose a space, etc. These are the axioms 
which properly relate only to quantities {quanta) as such. 

But with regard to quantity (qtiantitas), that is, with 
regard to the answer to the question, how large something 
may be, there are no axioms, in the proper [p. 164] 
sense of the word, though several of the propositions 
referring to it possess synthetical and immediate certainty 
{indemonstrabilid). The propositions that if equals be 
added to equals the wholes are equal, and if equals be 
taken from equals the remainders are equal, are really 
analytical, because I am conscious immediately of the 
identity of my producing the one quantity with my pro- 
ducing the other ; axioms on the contrary must be synthet- 
ical propositions a priori. The self-evident propositions 
on numerical relation again are no doubt synthetical, but 
they are not general, like those of geometry, and there- 
fore cannot be called axioms, but numerical formulas 
only. That 7 + 5 = 12 is not an analytical proposition. 
For neither in the representation of 7, nor in that of 5, 
nor in that of the combination of both, do I think the 
number 12. (That I am meant to think it in the addition 
of the two, is not the question here, for in every analytical 
proposition all depends on this, whether the predicate is 
really thought in the representation of the subject.) 
Although the proposition is synthetical, it is a singular 
proposition only. If in this case we consider only the 
synthesis of the homogeneous unities, then the synthesis 
can here take place in one way only, although afterwards 



Transcendental Analytic 135 

the use of these numbers becomes general. If I say, a 
triangle can be constructed with three lines, two of which 
together are greater than the third, I have before me the 
mere function of productive imagination, which may draw 
the lines greater or smaller, and bring them together at 
various angles. The number 7, on the contrary, [p. 165] 
is possible in one way only, and so likewise the number 
12, which is produced by the synthesis of the former with 
5. Such propositions therefore must not be called axioms 
(for their number would be endless) but numerical for- 
mulas. 

This transcendental principle of phenomenal mathemat- 
ics adds considerably to our knowledge a priori. Through 
it alone it becomes possible to make pure mathematics 
in their full precision applicable to objects of experience, 
which without that principle would by no means be self- 
evident, nay, has actually provoked much contradiction. 
Phenomena are not things in themselves. Empirical 
intuition is possible only through pure intuition (of space 
and time), and whatever geometry says of the latter is 
valid without contradiction of the former. All evasions, 
as if objects of the senses should not conform to the 
rules of construction in space (for instance, to the rule 
of the infinite divisibility of lines or angles) must cease, 
for one would thus deny all objective validity to space 
and with it to all mathematics, and would no longer 
know why and how far mathematics can be applied to 
phenomena. The synthesis of spaces and times, as the 
synthesis of the essential form of all intuition, is that 
which renders possible at the same time the apprehen- 
sion of phenomena, that is, every external [p. 166] 
experience, and therefore also all knowledge of its ob- 



136 Transcendental Analytic 

jects, and whatever mathematics, in their pure use prove 
of that synthesis is valid necessarily also of this knowledge. 
All objections to this are only the chicaneries of a falsely 
guided reason, which wrongly imagines that it can sepa- 
rate the objects of the senses from the formal conditions 
of our sensibility, and represents them, though they are 
phenomena only, as objects by themselves, given to the 
understanding. In this case, however, nothing could be 
known of them a priori, nothing could be known syn- 
thetically through pure concepts of space, and the sci- 
ence which determines those concepts, namely, geometry, 
would itself become impossible. 

II 

[Anticipations of Perception 

The principle which anticipates all perceptions as such, is this : In 
all phenomena sensation, and the Real which corresponds to it in 
the object (rea/itas phaenomenon), has an intensive quantity, that 
is, a degree 1 ] 

All knowledge by means of which I may know and 
determine a priori whatever belongs to empirical know- 
ledge, may be called an anticipation, and it is no doubt 
in this sense that Epicurus used the expression [p. 167] 
irpoXrj^is. But as there is always in phenomena some- 
thing which can never be known a priori, and constitutes 
the real difference between empirical and a priori know- 
ledge, namely, sensation (as matter of perception), it fol- 
lows that this can never be anticipated. The pure 
determinations, on the contrary, in space and time, as 

1 Here follows in the Second Edition, Supplement XVI b. 



Transcendental Analytic 137 

regards both figure and quantity, may be called antici- 
pations of phenomena, because they represent a priori ', 
whatever may be given a posteriori in experience. If, 
however, there should be something in every sensation 
that could be known a priori as sensation in general, 
even if no particular sensation be given, this would, in 
a very special sense, deserve to be called anticipation, 
because it seems extraordinary that we should anticipate 
experience in that which concerns the matter of experi- 
ence and can be derived from experience only. Yet such 
is really the case. 

Apprehension, by means of sensation only, fills no more 
than one moment (if we do not take into account the suc- 
cession of many sensations). Sensation, therefore, being 
that in the phenomenon the apprehension of which does 
not form a successive synthesis progressing from parts to 
a complete representation, is without any extensive quan- 
tity, and the absence of sensation in one and the same mo- 
ment would represent it as empty, therefore = 0. [p. 168] 
What corresponds in every empirical intuition to sensa- 
tion is reality \realitas phaenomenori), what corresponds to 
its absence is negation = 0. Every sensation, however, is 
capable of diminution, so that it may decrease, and grad- 
ually vanish. There is therefore a continuous connection 
between reality in phenomena and negation, by means of 
many possible intermediate sensations, the difference be- 
tween which is always smaller than the difference between 
the given sensation and zero or complete negation. It 
thus follows that the real in each phenomenon has always 
a quantity, though it is not perceived in apprehension, be- 
cause apprehension takes place by a momentary sensation, 
not by a successive synthesis of many sensations ; it does 



!38 Transcendental Analytic 

not advance from the parts to the whole, and though it 
has a quantity, it has not an extensive quantity. 

That quantity which can be apprehended as unity only, 
and in which plurality can be represented by approxima- 
tion only to negation = o, I call intensive quantity. Every 
reality therefore in a phenomenon has intensive quantity, 
that is, a degree. If this reality is considered as a cause 
(whether of sensation, or of any other reality in the phe- 
nomenon, for instance, of change) the degree of that 
reality as a cause we call a momentum, for instance, the 
momentum of gravity : and this because the degree indi- 
cates that quantity only, the apprehension of [p. 169] 
which is not successive, but momentary. This I men- 
tion here in passing, because we have not yet come to 
consider causality. 

Every, sensation, therefore, and every reality in phe- 
nomena, however small it may be, has a degree, that 
is, an intensive quantity which can always be diminished, 
and there is between reality and negation a continuous 
connection of possible realities, and of possible smaller 
perceptions. Every colour, red, for instance, has a 
degree, which, however small, is never the smallest ; 
and the same applies to heat, the momentum of gravity, 
etc. 

This peculiar property of quantities that no part 
of them is the smallest possible part (no part indi- 
visible) is called continuity. Time and space are quanta 
continua, because there is no part of them that is not 
enclosed between limits (points and moments), no part 
that is not itself again a space or a time. Space con- 
sists of spaces only, time of times. Points and moments 
are only limits, mere places of limitation, and as places 



Transcendental Analytic 139 

presupposing always those intuitions which they are 
meant to limit or to determine. Mere places or parts 
that might be given before space or time, could [p. 170] 
never be compounded into space or time. Such quanti- 
ties can also be called flowing, because the synthesis 
of the productive imagination which creates them is a 
progression in time, the continuity of which we are wont 
to express by the name of flowing, or passing away. 

All phenomena are therefore continuous quantities, 
whether according to their intuition as extensive, or 
according to mere perception (sensation and therefore 
reality) as intensive quantities. When there is a break 
in the synthesis of the manifold of phenomena, we get 
only an aggregate of many phenomena, not a phenom- 
enon, as a real quantum ; for aggregate is called that 
what is produced, not by the mere continuation of pro- 
ductive synthesis of a certain kind, but by the repeti- 
tion of a synthesis (beginning and) ending at every 
moment. If I call thirteen thalers a quantum of 
money, I am right, provided I understand by it the 
value of a mark of fine silver. This is a continuous 
quantity in which no part is the smallest, but every 
part may constitute a coin which contains material for 
still smaller coins. But if I understand by it thirteen 
round thalers, that is, so many coins (whatever their 
value in silver may be), then I should be wrong in 
speaking of a quantum of thalers, but should call it 
an aggregate, that is a number of coins. As every 
number must be founded on some unity, every [p. 171] 
phenomenon, as a unity, is a quantum, and, as such, a 
continuum. 

If then all phenomena, whether considered as exten- 



1 40 Transcendental Analytic 

sive or intensive, are continuous quantities, it might seem 
easy to prove with mathematical evidence that all change 
also (transition of a thing from one state into another) must 
be continuous, if the causality of the change did not lie 
quite outside the limits of transcendental philosophy, and 
presupposed empirical principles. For the understand- 
ing a priori tells us nothing of the possibility of a cause 
which changes the state of things, that is, determines 
them to the opposite of a given state, and this not only 
because it does not perceive the possibility of it (for 
such a perception is denied to us in several kinds of 
knowledge a priori), but because the changeability 
relates to certain determinations of phenomena to be 
taught by experience only, while their cause must lie 
in that which is unchangeable. But as the only ma- 
terials which we may use at present are the pure 
fundamental concepts of every possible experience, 
from which all that is empirical is excluded, we cannot 
here, without injuring the unity of our system, antici- 
pate general physical science which is based upon 
certain fundamental experiences. [p. 172] 

Nevertheless, there is no lack of evidence of the 
great influence which our fundamental principle exer- 
cises in anticipating perceptions, nay, even in making 
up for their deficiency, in so far as it (that principle) 
stops any false conclusions that might be drawn from 
this deficiency. 

If therefore all reality in perception has a certain 
degree, between which and negation there is an in- 
finite succession of ever smaller degrees, and if every 
sense must have a definite degree of receptivity of sen- 
sations, it follows that no perception, and therefore no 






Transcendental Analytic 14 1 

experience, is possible, that could prove, directly or 
indirectly, by any roundabout syllogisms, a complete 
absence of all reality in a phenomenon. We see there- 
fore that experience can never supply a proof of empty 
space or empty time, because the total absence of reality 
in a sensuous intuition can itself never be perceived, 
neither can it be deduced from any phenomenon what- 
soever and from the difference of degree in its reality ; 
nor ought it ever to be admitted in explanation of it. 
For although the total intuition of a certain space or 
time is real all through, no part of it being empty, yet 
as every reality has its degree which, while the exten- 
sive quality of the phenomenon remains un- [p. 173] 
changed, may diminish by infinite degrees down to 
the nothing or void, there must be infinitely differing 
degrees in which space and time are filled, and the 
intensive quantity in phenomena may be smaller or 
greater, although the extensive quantity as given in 
intuition remains the same. 

We shall give an example. Almost all natural philos- 
ophers, perceiving partly by means of the momentum 
of gravity or weight, partly by means of the momentum 
of resistance against other matter in motion, that there 
is a great difference in the quantity of various kinds 
of matter though their volume is the same, conclude 
unanimously that this volume (the extensive quantity 
of phenomena) must in all of them, though in differ- 
ent degrees, contain a certain amount of empty space. 
Who could have thought that these mathematical and 
mechanical philosophers should have based such a 
conclusion on a purely metaphysical hypothesis, which 
they always profess to avoid, by assuming that the real 



142 Transcendental Analytic 

in space (I do not wish here to call it impenetrability 
or weight, because these are empirical concepts) must 
always be the same, and can differ only by its extensive 
quantity, that is, by the number of parts. I meet this 
hypothesis, for which they could find no ground in 
experience, and which therefore is purely metaphysical, 
by a transcendental demonstration, which, though it is 
not intended to explain the difference in the [p. 174] 
filling of spaces, will nevertheless entirely remove the 
imagined necessity of their hypothesis which tries to 
explain that difference by the admission of empty 
spaces, and which thus restores, at least to the under- 
standing, its liberty to explain to itself that difference 
in a different way, if any such hypothesis be wanted 
in natural philosophy. 

We can easily perceive that although the same spaces 
are perfectly filled by two different kinds of matter, so 
that there is no point in either of them where matter is 
not present, yet the real in either, the quality being the 
same, has its own degrees (of resistance or weight) which, 
without any diminution of its extensive quantity, may grow 
smaller and smaller in infinitum, before it reaches the 
void and vanishes. Thus a certain expansion which fills 
a space, for instance, heat, and every other kind of phe- 
nomenal reality, may, without leaving the smallest part of 
space empty, diminish by degrees in infinitum, and never- 
theless fill space with its smaller, quite as much as another 
phenomenon with greater degrees. I do not mean to say 
that this is really the case with different kinds of matter 
according to their specific of gravity. I only want to 
show by a fundamental principle of the pure [p. 175] 
understanding, that the nature of our perceptions renders 



Transce7idental Analytic 143 

such an explanation possible, and that it is wrong to look 
upon the real in phenomena as equal in degree, and differ- 
ing only in aggregation and its extensive quantity, nay to 
maintain this on the pretended authority of an a priori 
principle of the understanding. 

Nevertheless, this anticipation of perception is apt to 
startle : an enquirer accustomed to and rendered cautious 
by transcendental disquisitions, and we may naturally won- 
der that the understanding should be able to anticipate 2 a 
synthetical proposition with regard to the degree of all 
that is real in phenomena, and, therefore, with regard to 
the possibility of an internal difference of sensation itself, 
apart from its empirical quality ; and it seems therefore a 
question well worthy of a solution, how the understanding 
can pronounce synthetically and a priori about phenomena, 
nay, anticipate them with regard to what, properly speak- 
ing, is empirical, namely, sensation. 

The quality of sensation, colour, taste, etc., is always em- 
pirical, and cannot be conceived a priori. But the real that 
corresponds to sensations in general, as opposed to nega- 
tion =0, does only represent something the concept of 
which implies being, and means nothing but the synthesis 
in any empirical consciousness. In the internal sense that 
empirical consciousness can be raised from o to [p. 176] 
any higher degree, so that an extensive quantity of intui- 
tion (for instance, an illuminated plain) excites the same 



1 Kant wrote, etwas — etwas Auffallendes, the second etzvas being the 
adverb. Rosenkranz has left out one etwas, without necessity. It seems 
necessary, however, to add Ube7'legung after transcendentalen, as done by Erd- 
mann. 

2 Anticipiren konne must certainly be added, as suggested by Schopen- 
hauer. 



!44 Transcendental Analytic 

amount of sensation, as an aggregate of many other less 
illuminated plains. It is quite possible, therefore, to take 
no account of the extensive quantity of a phenomenon, 
and yet to represent to oneself in the mere sensation in 
any single moment a synthesis of a uniform progression 
from o to any given empirical consciousness. All sensa- 
tions, as such, are therefore given a posteriori 1 only, but 
their quality, in so far as they must possess a degree, can 
be known a priori. It is remarkable that of quantities in 
general we can know one quality only a priori, namely, 
their continuity, while with regard to quality (the real of 
phenomena) nothing is known to us a priori, but their in- 
tensive quantity, that is, that they must have a degree. 
Everything else is left to experience. 

Ill 

[The Analogies of Experience 

The general principle of them is : All phenomena, as far as their ex- 
istence is concerned, are subject a priori to rules, determining their 
mutual relation in one and the same time 2 ] [p. 177] 

The three modi of time are permanence \ succession, and 
coexistence. There will therefore be three rules of all 
relations of phenomena in time, by which the existence of 
every phenomenon with regard to the unity of time is 
determined, and these rules will precede all experience, 
nay, render experience possible. 

The general principle of the three analogies depends 
on the necessary unity of apperception with reference to 

1 The first and later editions have a priori. The correction is first made 
in the Seventh Edition, 1828. 

2 See Supplement XVII. 



Transce?idental Analytic 145 

every possible empirical consciousness (perception) at 
every time, and, consequently, as that unity forms an a 
priori ground, on the synthetical unity of all phenomena, 
according to their relation in time. For the original ap- 
perception refers to the internal sense (comprehending all 
representations), and it does so a priori to its form, that is, 
to the relation of the manifold of the empirical conscious- 
ness in time. The original apperception is intended to 
combine all this manifold according to its relations in 
time, for this is what is meant by its transcendental unity 
a priori, to which all is subject which is to belong to my 
own and my uniform knowledge, and thus to become an 
object for me. This synthetical unity in the time relations 
of all perceptions, which is determined a priori, is exposed 
therefore in the law, that all empirical determinations of 
time must be subject to rules of the general [p. 178] 
determination of time ; and the analogies of experience, of 
which we are now going to treat, are exactly rules of this 
kind. 

These principles have this peculiarity, that they do not 
refer to phenomena and the synthesis of their empirical 
intuition, but only to the existence of phenomena and their 
mutual relation with regard to their existence. The man- 
ner in which something is apprehended as a phenomenon 
may be so determined a priori that the rule of its synthesis 
may give at the same time this intuition a pi'iori in any 
empirical case, nay, may really render it possible. But 
the existence of phenomena can never be known a priori, 
and though we might be led in this way to infer some 
kind of existence, we should never be able to know it 
definitely, or to anticipate that by which the empirical 
intuition of one differs from that of others. 



I 



!46 Transcendental Analytic 

The principles which we considered before and which, 
as they enable us to apply mathematics to phenomena, I 
called mathematical, refer to phenomena so far only as 
they are possible, and showed how, with regard both to 
their intuition and to the real in their perception, they can 
be produced according to the rules of a mathematical syn- 
thesis, so that, in the one as well as in the other, we may 
use numerical quantities, and with them a determination 
of all phenomena as quantities. Thus I might, [p. 179] 
for example, compound the degree of sensations of the 
sunlight out of, say, 200,000 illuminations by the moon, 
and thus determine it a priori or construct it. Those 
former principles might therefore be called constitutive. 

The case is totally different with those principles which 
are meant to bring the existence of phenomena under 
rules a priori, for as existence cannot be constructed, they 
can only refer to the relations of existence and become 
merely regulative principles. Here therefore we could 
not think of either axioms or anticipations, and whenever 
a perception is given us as related in time to some others 
(although undetermined), we could not say a priori what 
other perception or how great a perception is necessarily 
connected with it, but only how, if existing, it is neces- 
sarily connected with the other in a certain mode of time. 
In philosophy analogy means something very different to. 
what it does in mathematics. In the latter they are for- 
mulas which state the equality of two quantitative relations, 
and they are always constitutive so that when three 1 
terms of a proposition are given, the fourth also is given 
by it, that is, can be constructed out of it. In philosophy, 

1 The First and Second Editions read ' When two terms of a proposition 
are given, the third also.' 



Transcendental Analytic 147 

on the contrary, analogy does not consist in the equality 
of two quantitative, but of two qualitative relations, so that 
when three terms are given I may learn from them a 
priori the relation to a fourth only, but not that [p. 180] 
fourth term itself. All I can thus gain is a rule according 
to which I may look in experience for the fourth term, or 
a characteristic mark by which I may find it. An analogy 
of experience can therefore be no more than a rule accord- 
ing to which a certain unity of experience may arise from 
perceptions (but not how perception itself, as an empirical 
intuition, may arise); it may serve as a principle for ob- 
jects (as phenomena 1 ) not in a constitutive, but only in a 
regulative capacity. 

Exactly the same applies to the postulates of empirical 
thought in general, which relate to the synthesis of mere 
intuition (the form of phenomena), the synthesis of per- 
ception (the matter of them), and the synthesis of experi- 
ence (the relation of these perceptions). They too are 
regulative principles only, and differ from the mathemati- 
cal, which are constitutive, not in their certainty, which is 
established in both a priori, but in the character of their 
evidence, that is, in that which is intuitive in it, and there- 
fore in their demonstration also. 

What has been remarked of all synthetical principles 
and must be enjoined here more particularly is this, that 
these analogies have their meaning and validity, not as 
principles of the transcendent, but only as princi- [p. 181] 
pies of the empirical use of the understanding. They can 
be established in this character only, nor can phenomena 
ever be comprehended under the categories directly, but 

1 Read den Erscheinungen. 



I4 8 Transcendental Analytic 

only under their schemata. If the objects to which these 
principles refer were things by themselves, it would be 
perfectly impossible to know anything of them a priori 
and synthetically. But they are nothing but phenomena, 
and our whole knowledge of them, to which, after all, all 
principles a priori must relate, is only our possible experi- 
ence of them. Those principles therefore can aim at 
nothing but the conditions of the unity of empirical know- 
ledge in the synthesis of phenomena, which synthesis is 
represented only in the schema of the pure concepts of 
the understanding, while the category contains the func- 
tion, restricted by no sensuous condition, of the unity of 
this synthesis as synthesis in general. Those principles 
will therefore authorise us only to connect phenomena, 
according to analogy, with the logical and universal unity 
of concepts, so that, though in using the principle we use 
the category, yet in practice (in the application to phe- 
nomena) we put the schema of the category, as a practical 
key, in its 1 place, or rather put it by the side of the 
category as a restrictive condition, or, as what may be 
called, a formula of the category. 

1 I read deren, and afterwards der ersteren, though even then the whole 
passage is very involved. Professor Noire thinks that dessert may be referred 
to Gebrauch, and des ersteren to Grundsatz. 



Transcendental Analytic 149 

A [p. 182] 

[First Analogy 

Principle of Permanence 1 

All phenomena contain the permanent (substance) as the object itself, 
and the changeable as its determination only, that is, as a mode in 
which the object exists 

Pi'oof of the First Analogy 

All phenomena take place in time. Time can deter- 
mine in two ways the relation in the existence of phe- 
nomena, so far as they are either successive or coexistent. 
In the first case time is considered as a series, in the 
second as a whole.] 

Our apprehension of the manifold of phenomena is 
always successive, and therefore always changing. By it 
alone therefore we can never determine whether the man- 
ifold, as an object of experience, is coexistent or succes- 
sive, unless there is something in it which exists always, 
that is, something constant and permanent, while change 
and succession are nothing but so many kinds (modi) of 
time in which the permanent exists. Relations of time 
are therefore possible in the permanent only (coexistence 
and succession being the only relations of time) [p. 183] 
so that the permanent is the substratum of the empirical 
representation of time itself, and in it alone all determi- 
nation of time is possible. Permanence expresses time 
as the constant correlative of all existence of phenomena, 
of all change and concomitancy. For change does not 
affect time itself, but only phenomena in time (nor is 

1 See Supplement XVIII. 



!50 Transcendental Analytic 

coexistence a mode of time itself, because in it no parts 
can be coexistent, but successive only). If we were to 
ascribe a succession to time itself, it would be necessary 
to admit another time in which such succession should be 
possible. Only through the permanent does existence in 
different parts of a series of time assume a quantity which 
we call duration. For in mere succession existence always 
comes and goes, and never assumes the slightest quantity. 
Without something permanent therefore no relation of 
time is possible. Time by itself, however, cannot be per- 
ceived, and it is therefore the permanent in phenomena 
that forms the substratum for all determination of time, 
and at the same time the condition of the possibility of all 
synthetical unity of perceptions, that is, of experience ; 
while with regard to that permanent all existence and all 
change in time can only be taken as a mode of existence 
of what is permanent. In all phenomena therefore the 
permanent is the object itself, that is, the substance (phe- 
nomenon), while all that changes or can change [p. 184] 
belongs only to the mode in which substance or substances 
exist, therefore to their determinations. 

I find that in all ages not only the philosopher, but also 
the man of common understanding has admitted this 
permanence as a substratum of all change of phenomena. 
It will be the same in future, only that a philosopher 
generally expresses himself somewhat more definitely by 
saying that in all changes in the world the substance 
remains, and only the accidents change. But I nowhere 
find even the attempt at a proof of this very synthetical 
proposition, and it occupies but seldom that place which 
it ought to occupy at the head of the pure and entirely 
a priori existing laws of nature. In fact the proposition 



Transcendental Analytic 1 5 1 

that substance is permanent is tautological, because that 
permanence is the only ground why we apply the category 
of substance to a phenomenon, and it ought first to have 
been proved that there is in all phenomena something 
permanent, while the changeable is only a determination 
of its existence. But as such a proof can never be given 
dogmatically and as deduced from concepts, because it 
refers to a synthetical proposition a priori, and as no one 
ever thought that such propositions could be valid only in 
reference to possible experience, and could therefore be 
proved only by a deduction of the possibility of [p. 185] 
experience, we need not wonder that, though it served as 
the foundation of all experience (being felt to be indis- 
pensable for every kind of empirical knowledge), it has 
never been established by proof. 

A philosopher was asked, What is the weight of smoke? 
He replied, Deduct from the weight of the wood burnt 
the weight of the remaining ashes, and you have the 
weight of the smoke. He was therefore convinced that 
even in fire matter (substance) does not perish, but that its 
form only suffers a change. The proposition also, from 
nothing comes nothing, was only another conclusion from 
the same principle of permanence, or rather of the con- 
stant presence of the real subject in phenomena. For if 
that which people call substance in a phenomenon is to be 
the true substratum for all determination in time, then all 
existence in the past as well as the future must be deter- 
mined in it, and in it only. Thus we can only give to a 
phenomenon the name of substance because we admit its 
existence at all times, which is not even fully expressed by 
the word permanence, because it refers rather to future 
time only. The internal necessity however of permanence 



152 



Transcendental Ann lytic 



is inseparably connected with the necessity to have been 
always, and the expression may therefore stand, [p. 1 86] 
Gigni de nihilo nihil, in nihil um nil posse revert i, were 
two propositions which the ancients never separated, but 
which at present are sometimes parted, because people 
imagine that they refer to things by themselves, and that 
the former might contradict the dependence of the world 
on a Supreme Cause (even with regard to its substance), 
an apprehension entirely needless, as we are only speak- 
ing here of phenomena in the sphere of experience, the 
unity of which would never be possible, if we allowed that 
new things (new in substance) could ever arise. For in 
that case we should lose that which alone can represent 
the unity of time, namely, the identity of the substratum, 
in which alone all change retains complete unity. This 
permanence, however, is nothing but the manner in which 
we represent the existence of things (as phenomenal). 

The different determinations of a substance, which are 
nothing but particular modes in which it exists, are called 
accidents. They are always real, because they concern 
the existence of a substance (negations are nothing but 
determinations which express the non-existence of some- 
thing in the substance). If we want to ascribe a particular 
kind of existence to these real determinations of the sub- 
stance, as, for instance, to motion, as an accident of mat- 
ter, we call it inherence, in order to distinguish it from the 
existence of substance, which x we call subsistence. This, 
however, has given rise to many misunderstand- [p. 187] 
ings, and we shall express ourselves better and more cor- 
rectly, if we define the accident through the manner only 

1 Read das man. 



Transcendental Analytic 153 

in which the existence of a substance is positively deter- 
mined. It is inevitable, however, according to the condi- 
tions of the logical use of our understanding, to separate, 
as it were, whatever can change in the existence of a 
substance, while the substance itself remains unchanged, 
and to consider it in its relation to that which is radical 
and truly permanent. Hence a place has been assigned 
to this category under the title of relations, not so much 
because it contains itself a relation, as because it contains 
their condition. 

On this permanence depends also the right understand- 
ing of the concept of change. To arise and to perish are 
not changes of that which arises or perishes. Change is 
a mode of existence, which follows another mode of 
existence of the same object. Hence whatever changes 
is permanent, and its condition only changes. As this 
alteration refers only to determinations which may have 
an end or a beginning, we may use an expression that 
seems somewhat paradoxical and say : the permanent only 
(substance) is changed, the changing itself suffers no 
change, but only an alteration, certain determinations 
ceasing to exist, while others begin. 

It is therefore in substances only that change [p. 188] 
can be perceived. Arising or perishing absolutely, and 
not referring merely to a determination of the permanent 
can never become a possible perception, because it is the 
permanent only which renders the representations of a 
transition from one state to another, from not being to 
being, possible, which (changes) consequently can only be 
known empirically, as alternating determinations of what 
is permanent. If you suppose that something has an 
absolute beginning, you must have a moment of time in 



154 Transcendental Analytic 

which it was not. But with what can you connect that 
moment, if not with that which already exists ? An empty 
antecedent time cannot be an object of perception. But 
if you connect this beginning with things which existed 
already and continue to exist till the beginning of some- 
thing new, then the latter is only a determination of the 
former, as of the permanent. The same holds good with 
regard to perishing, for this would presuppose the empiri- 
cal representation of a time in which a phenomenon exists 
no longer. 

Substances therefore (as phenomena) are the true sub- 
strata of all determinations of time. If some substances 
could arise and others perish, the only condition of the 
empirical unity of time would be removed, and phenomena 
would then be referred to two different times, in which 
existence would pass side by side, which is absurd. For 
there is but one time in which all different times [p. 189] 
must be placed, not as simultaneous, but as successive. 

Permanence, therefore, is a necessary condition under 
which alone phenomena, as things or objects, can be 
determined in a possible experience. What the empirical 
criterion of this necessary permanence, or of the substan- 
tiality of phenomena may be, we shall have to explain in 
the sequel. 



Transcendental Analytic 155 

B 

[Second Analogy 

Principle of Production 1 

Everything that happens (begins to be), presupposes something on 
which it follows according to a rule] 

Proof 

The apprehension of the manifold of phenomena is 
always successive. The representations of the parts fol- 
low one upon another. Whether they also follow one 
upon the other in the object is a second point for reflec- 
tion, not contained in the former. We may indeed call 
everything, even every representation, so far as we are 
conscious of it, an object; but it requires a more profound 
investigation to discover what this word may [p. 190] 
mean with regard to phenomena, not in so far as they 
(as representations) are objects, but in so far as they only 
signify an object. So far as they, as representations only, 
are at the same time objects of consciousness, they cannot 
be distinguished from our apprehension, that is from their 
being received in the synthesis of our imagination, and we 
must therefore say, that the manifold of phenomena is 
always produced in the mind successively. If phenomena 
were things by themselves, the succession of the represen- 
tations of their manifold would never enable us to judge 
how that manifold is connected in the object. We have 
always to deal with our representations only ; how things 
may be by themselves (without reference to the represen- 
tations by which they affect us) is completely beyond the 

1 See Supplement XIX. 



1^6 Transcendental Analytic 

sphere of our knowledge. Since, therefore, phenomena 
are not things by themselves, and are yet the only thing 
that can be given to us to know, I am asked to say what 
kind of connection in time belongs to the manifold of the 
phenomena itself, when the representation of it in our 
apprehension is always successive. Thus, for instance, 
the apprehension of the manifold in the phenomenal 
appearance of a house that stands before me, is succes- 
sive. The question then arises, whether the manifold of 
the house itself be successive by itself, which of course 
no one would admit. Whenever I ask for the transcen- 
dental meaning of my concepts of an object, I find that a 
house is not a thing by itself, but a phenomenon [p. 191] 
only, that is, a representation the transcendental object 
of which is unknown. What then can be the meaning of 
the question, how the manifold in the phenomenon itself 
(which is not a thing by itself) may be connected ? Here 
that which is contained in our successive apprehension is 
considered as representation, and the given phenomenon, 
though it is nothing but the whole of those representa- 
tions, as their object, with which my concept, drawn from 
the representations of my apprehension, is to accord. As 
the accord between knowledge and its object is truth, it is 
easily seen, that we can ask here only for the formal con- 
ditions of empirical truth, and that the phenomenon, in 
contradistinction to the representations of our apprehen- 
sion, can only be represented as the object different from 
them, if it is subject to a rule distinguishing it from every 
other apprehension, and necessitating a certain kind of 
conjunction of the manifold. That which in the phe- 
nomenon contains the condition of this necessary rule of 
apprehension is the object. 



Transcendental Analytic 157 

Let us now proceed to our task. That something takes 
place, that is, that something, or some state, which did 
not exist before, begins to exist, cannot be perceived em- 
pirically, unless there exists antecedently a phenomenon 
which does not contain that state ; for a reality, following 
on empty time, that is a beginning of existence, [p. 192] 
preceded by no state of things, can be apprehended as 
little as empty time itself. Every apprehension of an 
event is therefore a perception following on another per- 
ception. But as this applies to all synthesis of apprehen- 
sion, as I showed before in the phenomenal appearance of 
a house, that apprehension would not thereby be different 
from any other. But I observe at the same time, that if 
in a phenomenon which contains an event I call the ante- 
cedent state of perception A, and the subsequent B, B can 
only follow A in my apprehension, while the perception A 
can never follow B, but can only precede it. I see, for 
instance, a ship gliding down a stream. My perception 
of its place below follows my perception of its place higher 
up in the course of the stream, and it is impossible in the 
apprehension of this phenomenon that the ship should be 
perceived first below and then higher up. We see there- 
fore that the order in the succession of perceptions in our 
apprehension is here determined, and our apprehension 
regulated by that order. In the former example of a 
house my perceptions could begin in the apprehension at 
the roof and end in the basement, or begin below and end 
above : they could apprehend the manifold of the empirical 
intuition from right to left or from left to right. There 
was therefore no determined order in the succession of 
these perceptions, determining the point where [p. 193] 
I had to begin in apprehension, in order to connect the 



jc8 Transcendental Analytic 

manifold empirically; while in the apprehension of an 
event there is always a rule, which makes the order of the 
successive perceptions (in the apprehension of this phe- 
nomenon) necessary. 

In our case, therefore, we shall have to derive the sub- 
jective succession in our apprehension from the objective 
succession of the phenomena, because otherwise the for- 
mer would be entirely undetermined, and unable to dis- 
tinguish one phenomenon from another. The former 
alone proves nothing as to the connection of the manifold 
in the object, because it is quite arbitrary. The latter 
must therefore consist in the order of the manifold in a 
phenomenon, according to which the apprehension of 
what is happening follows upon the apprehension of what 
has happened, in conformity with a rule. Thus only can 
I be justified in saying, not only of my apprehension, 
but of the phenomenon itself, that there exists in it a 
succession, which is the same as to say that I cannot 
arrange the apprehension otherwise than in that very 
succession. 

In conformity with this, there must exist in that which 
always precedes an event the condition of a rule, by which 
this event follows at all times, and necessarily; [p. 194] 
but I cannot go back from the event and determine by 
apprehension that which precedes. For no phenomenon 
goes back from the succeeding to the preceding point of 
time, though it is related to some preceding point of time, 
while the progress from a given time to a determined fol- 
lowing time is necessary. Therefore, as there certainly is 
something that follows, I must necessarily refer it to some- 
thing else which precedes, and upon which it follows by 
rule, that is, by necessity. So that the event, as being 



Transcendental Analytic 159 

conditional, affords a safe indication of some kind of con- 
dition, while that condition itself determines the event. 

If we supposed that nothing precedes an event upon 
which such event must follow according to rule, all succes- 
sion of perception would then exist in apprehension only, 
that is, subjectively ; but it would not thereby be deter- 
mined objectively, what ought properly to be the antece- 
dent and what the subsequent in perception. We should 
thus have a mere play of representations unconnected 
with any object, that is, no phenomenon would, by our 
perception, be distinguished in time from any other phe- 
nomenon, because the succession in apprehension would 
always be uniform, and there would be nothing in the 
phenomena to determine the succession, so as to render 
a certain sequence objectively necessary. I could not say 
therefore that two states follow each other in a phenome- 
non, but only that one apprehension follows [p. 195] 
another, which is purely subjective, and does not deter- 
mine any object, and cannot be considered therefore as 
knowledge of anything (even of something purely phe- 
nomenal). 

If therefore experience teaches us that something hap- 
pens, we always presuppose that something precedes on 
which it follows by rule. Otherwise I could not say of 
the object that it followed, because its following in my 
apprehension only, without being determined by rule in 
reference to what precedes, would not justify us in admit- 
ting an objective following. 1 It is therefore always with 
reference to a rule by which phenomena as they follow, 
that is as they happen, are determined by an antecedent 

1 Read anzunehmen berechtigt. 



x 6o Transcendental Analytic 

state, that I can give an objective character to my sub- 
jective synthesis (of apprehension); nay, it is under this 
supposition only that an experience of anything that hap- 
pens becomes possible. 

It might seem indeed as if this were in contradiction 
to all that has always been said on the progress of the 
human understanding, it having been supposed that only 
by a perception and comparison of many events, following 
in the same manner on preceding phenomena, we were led 
to the discovery of a rule according to which certain events 
always follow on certain phenomena, and that thus only 
we were enabled to form to ourselves the concept of a 
cause. If this were so, that concept would be [p. 196] 
empirical only, and the rule which it supplies, that every- 
thing which happens must have a cause, would be as acci- 
dental as experience itself. The universality and necessity 
of that rule would then be fictitious only, and devoid of 
any true and general validity, because not being a priori, 
but founded on induction only. The case is the same as 
with other pure representations a priori (for instance space 
and time), which we are only able to draw out as pure 
concepts from experience, because we have put them first 
into experience, nay, have rendered experience possible 
only by them. It is true, no doubt, that the logical clear- 
ness of this representation of a rule, determining the suc- 
cession of events, as a concept of cause, becomes possible 
only when we have used it in experience, but, as the con- 
dition of the synthetical unity of phenomena in time, it 
was nevertheless the foundation of all experience, and 
consequently preceded it a priori. 

It is necessary therefore to show by examples that we 
never, even in experience, ascribe the sequence or conse- 



Transcendental Analytic 161 

quence (of an event or something happening that did not 
exist before) to the object, and distinguish it from the sub- 
jective sequence of our apprehension, except when there 
is a rule which forces us to observe a certain order of per- 
ceptions, and no other; nay, that it is this force which 
from the first renders the representation of a [p. 197] 
succession in the object possible. 

We have representations within us, and can become 
conscious of them ; but however far that consciousness 
may extend, and however accurate and minute it may be, 
yet the representations are always representations only, 
that is, internal determinations of our mind in this or 
that relation of time. What right have we then to add 
to these representations an object, or to ascribe to these 
modifications, beyond their subjective reality, another ob- 
jective one ? Their objective character cannot consist in 
their relation to another representation (of that which one 
wished to predicate of the object), for thus the question 
would only arise again, how that representation could 
again go beyond itself, and receive an objective character 
in addition to the subjective one, which belongs to it, as a 
determination of our mind. If we try to find out what 
new quality or dignity is imparted to our representations 
by their relation to an object, we find that it consists in 
nothing but the rendering necessary the connection of 
representations in a certain way, and subjecting them to 
a rule ; and that on the other hand they receive their 
objective character only because a certain order is neces- 
sary in the time relations of our representations. 

In the synthesis of phenomena the manifold [p. 198] 
of our representations is always successive. No object 
can thus be represented, because through the succession 



i(y 2 Transcendental Analytic 

which is common to all apprehensions, nothing can be 
distinguished from anything else. But as soon as I per- 
ceive or anticipate that there is in this succession a rela- 
tion to an antecedent state from which the representation 
follows by rule, then something is represented as an event, 
or as something that happens : that is to say, I know an 
object to which I must assign a certain position in time, 
which, after the preceding state, cannot be different from 
what it is. If therefore I perceive that something hap- 
pens, this representation involves that something preceded, 
because the phenomenon receives its position in time with 
reference to what preceded, that is, it exists after a time 
in which it did not exist. Its definite position in time can 
only be assigned to it, if in the antecedent state something 
is presupposed on which it always follows by rule. It 
thus follows that, first of all, I cannot invert the order, 
and place that which happens before that on which it 
follows; secondly, that whenever the antecedent state is 
there, the other event must follow inevitably and neces- 
sarily. Thus it happens that there arises an order among 
our representations, in which the present state [p. 199] 
(as having come to be), points to an antecedent state, as 
a correlative of the event that is given ; a correlative 
which, though as yet indefinite, refers as determining to 
the event, as its result, and connects that event with itself 
by necessity, in the succession of time. 

If then it is a necessary law of our sensibility, and 
therefore a formal condition of all perception, that a pre- 
ceding necessarily determines a succeeding time (because 
I cannot arrive at the succeeding time except through the 
preceding), it is also an indispensable law of the empirical 
representation of the series of time that the phenomena of 



Transcendental Analytic 163 

past time determine every existence in succeeding times, 
nay, that these, as events, cannot take place except so far 
as the former determine their existence in time, that is, 
determine it by rule. For it is of course in phenomena only 
that we can know empirically this continuity in the cohe- 
rence of times. 

What is required for all experience and renders it pos- 
sible is the understanding, and the first that is added by 
it is not that it renders the representation of objects 
clear, but that it really renders the representation of any 
object for the first time possible. This takes place by the 
understanding transferring the order of time to the phe- 
nomena and their existence, and by assigning to each of 
them as to a consequence a certain a priori determined 
place in time, with reference to antecedent phenomena, 
without which place phenomena would not be in [p. 200] 
accord with time, which determines a priori their places 
to all its parts. This determination of place cannot be 
derived from the relation in which phenomena stand to 
absolute time (for that can never be an object of percep- 
tion); but, on the contrary, phenomena must themselves 
determine to each other their places in time, and render 
them necessary in the series of time. In other words, what 
happens or follows must follow according to a general rule 
on that which was contained in a previous state. We thus 
get a series of phenomena which, by means of the under- 
standing, produces and makes necessary in the series of 
possible perceptions the same order and continuous cohe- 
rence which exists a priori in the form of internal intui- 
tion (time), in which all perceptions must have their place. 

That something happens is therefore a perception 
which belongs to a possible experience, and this experi- 



i 64 Transcendental A na lytic 

ence becomes real when I consider the phenomenon as 
determined with regard to its place in time, that is to say, 
as an object which can always be found, according to a 
rule, in the connection of perceptions. This rule, by 
which we determine everything according to the succes- 
sion of time, is this : the condition under which an event 
follows at all times (necessarily) is to be found in what 
precedes. All possible experience therefore, that is, all 
objective knowledge of phenomena with regard to their 
relation in the succession of time, depends on [p. 201] 
'the principle of sufficient reason.' 

The proof of this principle rests entirely on the fol- 
lowing considerations. All empirical knowledge requires 
synthesis of the manifold by imagination, which is always 
successive, one representation following upon the other. 
That succession, however, in the imagination is not at all 
determined with regard to the order in which something 
precedes and something follows, and the series of succes- 
sive representations may be taken as retrogressive as well as 
progressive. If that synthesis, however, is a synthesis of 
apperception (of the manifold in a given phenomenon), 
then the order is determined in the object, or, to speak 
more accurately, there is then in it an order of successive 
synthesis which determines the object, and according to 
which something must necessarily precede, and, when it 
is once there, something else must necessarily follow. If 
therefore my perception is to contain the knowledge of an 
event, or something that really happens, it must consist of 
an empirical judgment, by which the succession is sup- 
posed to be determined, so that the event presupposes 
another phenomenon in time on which it follows neces- 
sarily and according to a rule. If it were different, if the 



Transcendental Analytic 165 

antecedent phenomenon were there, and the event did not 
follow on it necessarily, it would become to me a mere 
play of my subjective imaginations, or if I thought it to 
be objective, I should call it a dream. It is therefore the 
relation of phenomena (as possible perceptions) [p. 202] 
according to which the existence of the subsequent (what 
happens) is determined in time by something antecedent 
necessarily and by rule, or, in other words, the relation 
of cause and effect, which forms the condition of the 
objective validity of our empirical judgments with regard 
to the series of perceptions, and therefore also the condi- 
tion of the empirical truth of them, and of experience. 
The principle of the causal relation in the succession of 
phenomena is valid therefore for all objects of experience, 
also (under the conditions of succession), because that 
principle is itself the ground of the possibility of such 
experience. 

Here, however, we meet with a difficulty that must first 
be removed. The principle of the causal connection of 
phenomena is restricted in our formula to their succession, 
while in practice we find that it applies also to their coexist- 
ence, because cause and effect may exist at the same time. 
There may be, for instance, inside a room heat which is not 
found in the open air. If I look for its cause, I find a 
heated stove. But that stove, as cause, exists at the same 
time with its effect, the heat of the room, and there is 
therefore no succession in time between cause and effect, 
but they are coexistent, and yet the law applies. The 
fact is, that the greater portion of the active [p. 203] 
causes 1 in nature is coexistent with its effects, and the 

1 The reading of the First Edition is Ursache; Ursachen is a conjecture 
made by Rosenkranz and approved by others. 



i66 Transcendental Analytic 

succession of these effects in time is due only to this, that 
a cause cannot produce its whole effect in one moment. 
But at the moment in which an effect first arises it is 
always coexistent with the causality of its cause, because 
if that had ceased one moment before, the effect would 
never have happened. Here we must well consider that 
what is thought of is the order, not the lapse of time, and 
that the relation remains, even if no time had lapsed. 
The time between the causality of the cause and its im- 
mediate effect can be vanishing (they may be simultane- 
ous), but the relation of the one to the other remains for 
all that determinable in time. If I look upon a ball that 
rests on a soft cushion, and makes a depression in it, as a 
cause, it is simultaneous with its effect. But I neverthe- 
less distinguish the two through the temporal relation of 
dynamical connection.' For if I place the ball on a cush- 
ion, its smooth surface is followed by a depression, while, 
if there is a depression in the cushion (I know not 
whence), a leaden ball does by no means follow from it. 

The succession in time is therefore the only empirical 
criterion of an effect with regard to the causality of the 
cause which precedes it. The glass is the cause of the 
rising of the water above its horizontal surface, [p. 204] 
although both phenomena are simultaneous. For as soon 
as I draw water in a glass from a larger vessel, something 
follows, namely, the change of the horizontal state which 
it had before into a concave state which it assumes in the 
glass. 

This causality leads to the concept of action, that to 
the concept of force, and lastly, to the concept of sub- 
stance. As I do not mean to burden my critical task, 
which only concerns the sources of synthetical knowledge 



Transcendental Analytic 167 

a priori, with analytical processes which aim at the ex- 
planation, and not at the expansion of our concepts, I 
leave a fuller treatment of these to a future system of 
pure reason ; nay, I may refer to many well-known man- 
uals in which such an analysis may be found. I cannot 
pass, however, over the empirical criterion of a substance, 
so far as it seems to manifest itself, not so much through 
the permanence of the phenomenon as through action. 

Wherever there is action, therefore activity and force, 
there must be substance, and in this alone the seat of that 
fertile source of phenomena can be sought. This sounds 
very well, but if people are asked to explain what they 
mean by substance, they find it by no means easy to 
answer without reasoning in a circle. How can [p. 205] 
we conclude immediately from the action to the perma- 
nence of the agent, which nevertheless is an essential 
and peculiar characteristic of substance (phaenomenon) ? 
After what we have explained before, however, the an- 
swer to this question is not so difficult, though it would 
be impossible, according to the ordinary way of proceed- 
ing analytically only with our concepts. Action itself 
implies the relation of the subject of the causality to the 
effect. As all effect consists in that which happens, that 
is, in the changeable, indicating time in succession, the last 
subject of it is the permanent, as the substratum of all 
that changes, that is substance. For, according to the 
principle of causality, actions are always the first ground 
of all change of phenomena, and cannot exist therefore in 
a subject that itself changes, because in that case other 
actions and another subject would be required to deter- 
mine that change. Action, therefore, is a sufficient em- 
pirical criterion to prove substantiality, nor is it necessary 



!68 Transcendental Analytic 

that I should first establish its permanency by means of 
compared perceptions, which indeed would hardly be pos- 
sible in this way, at least with that completeness which is 
required by the magnitude and strict universality of the 
concept. That the first subject of the causality of all aris- 
ing and perishing cannot itself (in the field of phenomena) 
arise and perish, is a safe conclusion, pointing in [p. 206] 
the end to empirical necessity and permanency in exist- 
ence, that is, the concept of a substance as a phenomenon. 

If anything happens, the mere fact of something aris- 
ing, without any reference to what it is, is in itself a mat- 
ter for enquiry. The transition from the not-being of a 
state into that state, even though it contained no quality 
whatever as a phenomenon, must itself be investigated. 
This arising, as we have shown in No. A, does not con- 
cern the substance (because a substance never arises), but 
its state only. It is therefore mere change, and not an 
arising out of nothing. When such an arising is looked 
upon as the effect of a foreign cause, it is called creation. 
This can never be admitted as an event among phenom- 
ena, because its very possibility would destroy the unity 
of experience. If, however, we consider all things, not as 
phenomena, but as things by themselves and objects of 
the understanding only, then, though they are substances, 
they may be considered as dependent in their existence 
on a foreign cause. Our words would then assume quite 
a different meaning, and no longer be applicable to phe- 
nomena, as possible objects of experience. 

How anything can be changed at all, how it is possible 
that one state in a given time is followed by an- [p. 207] 
other at another time, of that we have not the slightest 
conception a priori. We want for that a knowledge of 



Transcendental Analytic 169 

real powers, which can be given empirically only : for 
instance, a knowledge of motive powers, or what is the 
same, a knowledge of certain successive phenomena (as 
movements) which indicate the presence of such forces. 
What can be considered a priori, according to the law of 
causality and the conditions of time, are the form of every 
change, the condition under which alone, as an arising of 
another state, it can take place (its contents, that is, the 
state, which is changed, being what it may), and therefore 
the succession itself of the states (that which has hap- 
pened). 1 

When a substance passes from one state a into another 
b, the moment of the latter is different from the moment 
of the former state, and follows it. Again, that second 
state, as a reality (in phenomena), differs from the first in 
which that reality did not exist, as b from zero ; that is, 
even if the state b differed from the state a in quantity 
only, that change is an arising of b — a, which in the 
former state was non-existent, and in relation to [p. 208] 
which that state is = o. 

The question therefore arises how a thing can pass from 
a state —a to another =b? Between two moments there 
is always a certain time, and between two states in these 
two moments there is always a difference which must 
have a certain quantity, because all parts of phenomena 
are always themselves quantities. Every transition there- 
fore from one state into another takes place in a certain 
time between two moments, the first of which determines 

1 It should be remarked that I am not speaking here of the change of 
certain relations, but of the change of a state. Therefore when a body moves 
in a uniform way, it does not change its state of movement, but it does so 
when its motion increases or decreases. 



170 



Transcendental A na lytic 



the state from which a thing arises, the second that at 
which it arrives. Both therefore are the temporal limits 
of a change or of an intermediate state between two 
states, and belong as such to the whole of the change. 
Every change, however, has a cause which proves its 
causality during the whole of the time in which the 
change takes place. The cause therefore does not pro- 
duce the change suddenly (in one moment), but during a 
certain time ; so that, as the time grows from the initiatory 
moment a to its completion in b, the quantity of reality 
also (b — a) is produced through all the smaller degrees 
between the first and the last. All change therefore is 
possible only through a continuous action of causality 
which, so far as it is uniform, is called a mo- [p. 209] 
mentum. A change does not consist of such momenta, 
but is produced by them as their effect. 

This is the law of continuity in all change, founded on 
this, that neither time nor a phenomenon in time consists 
of parts which are the smallest possible, and that never- 
theless the state of a thing which is being changed passes 
through all these parts, as elements, to its new state. No 
difference of the real in phenomena and no difference in 
the quantity of times is ever the smallest ; and thus the 
new state of reality grows from the first state in which 
that reality did not exist through all the infinite degrees 
thereof, the differences of which from one another are 
smaller than that between zero and a. 

It does not concern us at present of what utility this 
principle may be in physical science. But how such a 
principle, which seems to enlarge our knowledge of nature 
so much, can be possible a priori, that requires a careful 
investigation, although we can see that it is real and true, 



Transcendental Analytic i/i 

and might thus imagine that the question how it was pos- 
sible is unnecessary. For there are so many unfounded 
pretensions to enlarge our knowledge by pure reason that 
we must accept it as a general principle, to be always dis- 
trustful, and never to believe or accept any- [p. 210] 
thing of this kind without documents capable of a thor- 
ough deduction, however clear the dogmatical proof of it 
may appear. 

All addition to our empirical knowledge and every ad- 
vance in perception is nothing but an enlargement of the 
determinations of our internal sense, that is, a progression 
in time, whatever the objects may be, whether phenomena 
or pure intuitions. This progression in time determines 
everything, and is itself determined by nothing else, that 
is, the parts of that progression are only given in time, 
and through the synthesis of time, but not time before 
this synthesis. For this reason every transition m our 
perception to something that follows in time is really a 
determination of time through the production of that per- 
ception, and as time is always and in all its parts a quantity, 
the production of a perception as a quantity, through all 
degrees (none of them being the smallest), from zero up 
to its determined degree. This shows how it is possible 
to know a priori a law of changes, as far as their form is 
concerned. We are only anticipating our own apprehen- 
sion, the formal condition of which, as it dwells in us 
before all given phenomena, may well be known a priori. 

In the same manner therefore in which time contains 
the sensuous condition a priori of the'possi- [p. 211] 
bility of a continuous progression of that which exists to 
that which follows, the understanding, by means of the 
unity of apperception, is a condition a priori of the possi- 



iy 2 Transcendental Analytic 

bility of a continuous determination of the position of all 
phenomena in that time, and this through a series of 
causes and effects, the former producing inevitably the 
existence of the latter, and thus rendering the empirical 
knowledge of the relations of time valid for all times 
(universally) and therefore objectively valid. 



\_TJiird Analogy 

Principle of Community 

All substances, in so far as they are coexistent, stand in complete 
community, that is, reciprocity one to another 1 ] 

Proof 

Things are coexistent in so far as they exist at one and 
the same time. But how can we know that they exist at 
one and the same time ? Only if the order in the syn- 
thesis of apprehension of the manifold is indifferent, that 
is, if I may advance from A through B, C, D, to E, or 
contrariwise from E to A. For, if the synthesis were 
successive in time (in the order beginning with A and 
ending with E), it would be impossible to begin the appre- 
hension with the perception of E and to go backwards to 
A, because A belongs to past time, and can no longer be 
an object of apprehension. [p. 212] 

If we supposed it possible that in a number of sub- 
stances, as phenomena, each were perfectly isolated, so 
that none influenced another or received influences from 

1 See Supplement XX. 



Transcendental Analytic 173 

another, then the coexistence of them could never become 
an object of possible perception, nor could the existence of 
the one through any process of empirical synthesis lead us 
on to the existence of another. For if we imagined that 
they were separated by a perfectly empty space, a percep- 
tion, proceeding from the one in time to the other might 
no doubt determine the existence of it by means of a sub- 
sequent perception, but would never be able to determine 
whether that phenomenon followed objectively on the 
other or was coexistent with it. 

There must therefore be something besides their mere 
existence by which A determines its place in time for B, 
and B for A, because thus only can these two substances 
be represented empirically as coexistent. Nothing, how- 
ever, can determine the place of anything else in time, 
except that which is its cause or the cause of its deter- 
minations. Therefore every substance (since it can be 
effect with regard to its determinations only) must contain 
in itself the causality of certain determinations in another 
substance, and, at the same time, the effects of the causal- 
ity of that other substance, that is, substances must stand 
in dynamical communion, immediately or medi- [p. 213] 
ately, with each other, if their coexistence is to be known 
in any possible experience. Now, everything without 
which the experience of any objects would be impossible, 
may be said to be necessary with reference to such objects 
of experience ; from which it follows that it is necessary 
for all substances, so far as they are coexistent as phe- 
nomena, to stand in a complete communion of reciprocity 
with each other. 

The word communion (Gemeinschaft) may be used in 
two senses, meaning either communio or commercium. 



1^4 Transcendental Analytic 

We use it here in the latter sense : as a dynamical com- 
munion without which even the local communio spatii 
could never be known empirically. We can easily per- 
ceive in our experience, that continuous influences only 
can lead our senses in all parts of space from one object 
to another ; that the light which plays between our eyes 
and celestial bodies produces a mediate communion be- 
tween us and them, and proves the coexistence of the 
latter ; that we cannot change any place empirically (per- 
ceive such a change) unless matter itself renders the per- 
ception of our own place possible to us, and that by means 
of its reciprocal influence only matter can evince its simul- 
taneous existence, and thus (though mediately only) its 
coexistence, even to the most distant objects. Without 
this communion every perception (of any phe- [p. 214] 
nomenon in space) is separated from the others, and the 
chain of empirical representations, that is, experience 
itself, would have to begin de novo with every new object, 
without the former experience being in the least connected 
with it, or standing to it in any temporal relation. I do 
not want to say anything here against empty space. 
Empty space may exist where perception cannot reach, 
and where therefore no empirical knowledge of coexist- 
ence takes place, but, in that case, it is no object for any 
possible experience. 

The following remarks may elucidate this. It is neces- 
sary that in our mind all phenomena, as being contained 
in a possible experience, must share a communion of ap- 
perception, and if the objects are to be represented as 
connected in coexistence, they must reciprocally determine 
their place in time, and thus constitute a whole. If this 
subjective communion is to rest on an objective ground, or 



Transcendental Analytic 175 

is to refer to phenomena as substances, then the percep- 
tion of the one as cause must render possible the per- 
ception of the other, and vice versa: so that the succession 
which always exists in perceptions, as apprehensions, may 
not be attributed to the objects, but that the objects should 
be represented as existing simultaneously. This is a recip- 
rocal influence, that is a real commercium of substances, 
without which the empirical relation of co-exist- [p. 215] 
ence would be impossible in our experience. Through 
this commercium, phenomena as being apart from each 
other and yet connected, constitute a compound (composi- 
tion reale), and such compounds become possible in many 
ways. The three dynamical relations, therefore, from 
which all others are derived, are inherence, consequence, 
and composition. 

These are the three analogies of experience. They are 
nothing but principles for determining the existence of 
phenomena in time, according to its three modes. First, 
the relation of time itself, as to a quantity (quantity of 
existence, that is duration). Secondly, the relation in 
time, as in a series (successively). And thirdly, likewise 
in time, as the whole of all existence (simultaneously). 
This unity in the determination of time is dynamical only, 
that is, time is not looked upon as that in which experience 
assigns immediately its place to every existence, for this 
would be impossible ; because absolute time is no object of 
perception by which phenomena could be held together ; 
but the rule of the understanding through which alone the 
existence of phenomena can receive synthetical unity in 
time determines the place of each of them in time, there- 
fore a,priori and as valid for all time. 



176 Transcendental Analytic 

By nature (in the empirical sense of the word) [p. 216] 
we mean the coherence of phenomena in their existence, 
according to necessary rules, that is, laws. There are 
therefore certain laws, and they exist a priori, which them- 
selves make nature possible, while the empirical laws exist 
and are discovered through experience, but in accordance 
with those original laws which first render experience pos- 
sible. Our analogies therefore represent the unity of 
nature in the coherence of all phenomena, under certain 
exponents, which express the relation of time (as compre- 
hending all existence) to the unity of apperception, which 
apperception can only take place in the synthesis accord- 
ing to rules. The three analogies, therefore, simply say, 
that all phenomena exist in one nature, and must so exist 
because, without such unity a priori no unity of experi- 
ence, and therefore no determination of objects in experi- 
ence, would be possible. 

With regard to the mode of proof, by which we 
have arrived at these transcendental laws of nature 
and its peculiar character, a remark must be made 
which will become important as a rule for any other 
attempt to prove intelligible, and at the same time 
synthetical propositions a priai. If we had attempted 
to prove these analogies dogmatically, that is from con- 
cepts, showing that all which exists is found only in 
that which is permanent, that every event [p. 217] 
presupposes something in a previous state on which it 
follows by rule, and lastly, that in the manifold which 
is coexistent, states coexist in relation to each other 
by rule, all our labour would have been in vain. For 
we may analyse as much as we like, we shall never 
arrive from one object and its existence at the existence 



Transcendental A?ialytic I J J 

of another, or at its mode of existence by means of 
the concepts of these things only. What else then 
remained ? There remained the possibility of expe- 
rience, as that knowledge in which all objects must 
in the end be capable of being given to us, if their 
representation is to have any objective reality for us. 
In this, namely in the synthetical unity of appercep- 
tion of all phenomena, we discovered the conditions 
a priori of an absolute and necessary determination 
in time of all phenomenal existence. Without this 
even the empirical determinations in time would be 
impossible, and we thus established the rules of the 
synthetical unity a priori, by which we might antici- 
pate experience. It was because people were ignorant 
of this method, and imagined that they could prove 
dogmatically synthetical propositions which the empir- 
ical use of the understanding follows as its principles, 
that so many and always unsuccessful attempts have 
been made to prove the proposition of the ' sufficient 
reason.' The other two analogies have not even been 
thought of, though everybody followed them uncon- 
sciously, 1 because the method of the categories [p. 218] 
was wanting, by which alone every gap in the under- 



1 The unity of the universe, in which all phenomena are supposed to be 
connected, is evidently a mere deduction of the quietly adopted principle of 
the communion of all substances as coexistent; for if they were isolated, they 
would not form parts of a whole, and if their connection (the reciprocity of 
the manifold) were not necessary for the sake of their coexistence, it would be 
impossible to use the latter, which is a purely ideal relation, as a proof of the 
former, which is real. We have shown, however, that communion is really 
the ground of the possibility of an empirical knowledge of coexistence, and 
that really we can only conclude from this the existence of the former, as its 
condition. 



lyg Transcendental Analytic 

standing, both with regard to concepts and principles, 
can be discovered and pointed out. 



IV 

The Postulates of Empirical Thought in General 

i. What agrees with the formal conditions of experience (in intuition 
and in concepts) is possible 

2. What is connected with the material conditions of experience (sensa- 

tion) is real 

3. That which, in its connection with the real, is determined by uni- 

versal conditions of experience, is (exists as) necessary 

Explanation [p. 219] 

The categories of modality have this peculiar character 
that, as determining an object, they do not enlarge in the 
least the concept to which they are attached as predicates, 
but express only a relation to our faculty of knowledge. 
Even when the concept of a thing is quite complete, I can 
still ask with reference to that object, whether it is pos- 
sible only, or real also, and, if the latter, whether it is 
necessary ? No new determinations of the object are 
thereby conceived, but it is only asked in what relation it 
(with all its determinations) stands to the understanding 
and its empirical employment, to the empirical faculty of 
judgment, and to reason, in its application to experience ? 

The principles of modality are therefore nothing but 
explanations of the concepts of possibility, reality, and 
necessity, in their empirical employment, confining all 
categories to an empirical employment only, and prohibit- 
ing their transcendental 1 use. For if these categories are 

1 Here the same as transcendent. 



Trci7iscendental Analytic 179 

not to have a purely logical character, expressing the 
forms of thought analytically, but are to refer to things, 
their possibility, reality, or necessity, they must have 
reference to possible experience and its synthetical unity, 
in which alone objects of knowledge can be given. 

The postulate of the possibility of things [p. 220] 
demands that the concept of these should agree with the 
formal conditions of experience in general. This, the ob- 
jective form of experience in general, contains all synthesis 
which is required for a knowledge of objects. A concept 
is to be considered as empty, and as referring to no object, 
if the synthesis which it contains does not belong to 
experience, whether as borrowed from it (in which case it 
is called an empirical concept), or as a synthesis on which, 
as a condition a priori, all experience (in its form) depends, 
in which case it is a pure concept, but yet belonging to 
experience, because its object can only be found in it. 
For whence could the character of the possibility of an 
object, which can be conceived by a synthetical concept 
a priori, be derived, except from the synthesis which con- 
stitutes the form of all empirical knowledge of objects? 
It is no doubt a necessary logical condition, that such a 
concept must contain nothing contradictory, but this is by 
no means sufficient to establish the objective reality of a 
concept, that is, the possibility of such an object, as is con- 
ceived by a concept. Thus in the concept of a figure to 
be enclosed between two straight lines, there is nothing 
contradictory, because the concepts of two straight lines 
and their meeting contain no negation of a fig- [p. 221] 
ure. The impossibility depends, not on the concept itself, 
but on its construction in space, that is, the conditions of 
space and its determinations, and it is these that have ob- 



!go Transcendental Analytic 

jective reality, or apply to possible things, because they 
contain a priori in themselves the form of experience in 
general. 

And now we shall try to explain the manifold usefulness 
and influence of this postulate of possibility. If I repre- 
sent to myself a thing that is permanent, while everything 
which changes belongs merely to its state, I can never 
know from such a concept by itself that a thing of that 
kind is possible. Or, if I represent to myself something 
so constituted that, when it is given, something else must 
at all times and inevitably follow upon it, this may no 
doubt be conceived without contradiction, but we have as 
yet no means of judging whether such a quality, viz. 
causality, is to be met with in any possible object. Lastly, 
I can very well represent to myself different things (sub- 
stances) so constituted, that the state of the one produces 
an effect on the state of the other, and this reciprocally; 
but whether such a relation can belong to any things can- 
not be learned from these concepts which contain a purely 
arbitrary synthesis. The objective reality of these con- 
cepts is only known when we see that they [p. 222] 
express a priori the relations of perceptions in every kind 
of experience; and this objective reality, that is, their 
transcendental truth, though independent of all experi- 
ence, is nevertheless not independent of all relation to the 
form of experience in general, and to that synthetical 
unity in which alone objects can be known empirically. 

But if we should think of framing new concepts of sub- 
stances, forces, and reciprocal actions out of the material 
supplied to us by our perceptions, without borrowing from 
experience the instance of their connection, we should en- 
tangle ourselves in mere cobwebs of our brain, the possi- 



Tra7iscendental Analytic 181 

bility of which could not be tested by any criteria, because 
in forming them we were not guided by experience, nor 
had borrowed these concepts from it. Such purely imag- 
inary concepts cannot receive the character of possibility, 
like the categories a priori, as conditions on which all 
experience depends, but only a posteriori ', as concepts that 
must be given by experience, so that their possibility can 
either not be known at all, or a posteriori, and empirically 
only. Thus, for instance, a substance supposed to be 
present as permanent in space, and yet not filling it (like 
that something between matter and the thinking subject, 
which some have tried to introduce), or a peculiar faculty 
of our mind, by which we can see (not only infer) the 
future, or lastly, another faculty, by which we can enter 
into a community of thought with other men (however dis- 
tant they may be), all these are concepts the [p. 223] 
possibility of which has nothing to rest on, because it is 
not founded on experience and its known laws. Without 
these they are and can only be arbitrary combinations of 
thought which, though they contain nothing contradictory 
in themselves, have no claim to objective reality, or to the 
possibility of such an object as is to be conceived by them. 
With regard to reality, it stands to reason that we cannot 
conceive it in the concrete without the aid of experience ; 
for reality concerns sensation only, as the material of ex- 
perience, and not the form of relations, which might to a 
certain extent allow us to indulge in mere fancies. 

I here pass by everything the possibility of which can 
only be learned from its reality in experience, and I only 
mean to consider the possibility of things through con- 
cepts a priori. Of these (concepts) I persist in maintain- 
ing that they can never exist as such concepts by them- 



X 82 Transcendental Analytic 

selves alone, but only as formal and objective conditions 
of experience in general. 1 

It might seem indeed as if the possibility of a triangle 
could be known from its concept by itself (being inde- 
pendent of all experience), for we can give to it an object 
entirely a priori, that is, we can construct it. But as this 
is only the form of an object, it would always remain a 
product of the imagination only. The possibil- [p. 224] 
ity of its object would remain doubtful, because more is 
wanted to establish it, namely, that such a figure should 
really be conceived under all those conditions on which all 
objects of experience depend. That which alone connects 
with this concept the representation of the possibility of 
such a thing, is the fact that space is a formal condition 
a priori of all external experiences, and that the same for- 
mative synthesis, by which we construct a triangle in im- 
agination, should be identical with that which we exercise 
in the apprehension of a phenomenon, in order to make 
an empirical concept of it. And thus the possibility of 
continuous quantities, nay, of all quantities, the concepts 
of which are always synthetical^ can never be deduced 
from the concepts themselves, but only from them, as 
formal conditions of the determination of objects in all 
experience. And where indeed should we look for ob- 
jects, corresponding to our concepts, except in experience, 
by which alone objects are given us? If we are able 
to know and determine the possibility of things without 
any previous experience, this is only with reference to 
those formal conditions under which anything may become 



1 I have adopted Erdmann's conjecture, ah solche Begriffe instead of aus 
solchen Begriffen, 



Transcendental Analytic 183 

an object in experience. This takes place entirely a 
priori, but nevertheless in constant reference to experi- 
ence, and within its limits. 

The postulate concerning our knowledge of [p. 225] 
the reality of things, requires perception, therefore sensa- 
tion and consciousness of it, not indeed immediately of 
the object itself, the existence of which is to be known, 
but yet of a connection between it and some real percep- 
tion, according to the analogies of experience which deter- 
mine in general all real combinations in experience. 

In the mere concept of a thing no sign of its existence 
can be discovered. For though the concept be ever so 
perfect, so that nothing should be wanting in it to enable 
us to conceive the thing with all its own determinations, 
existence has nothing to do with all this. It depends only 
on the question whether such a thing be given us, so 
that its perception may even precede its concept. A con- 
cept preceding experience implies its possibility only, 
while perception, which supplies the material of a con- 
cept, is the only characteristic of reality. It is possible, 
however, even before the perception of a thing, and there- 
fore, in a certain sense, a priori, to know its existence, 
provided it hang together with some other perceptions, 
according to the principles of their empirical connection 
(analogies). For in that case the existence of a thing 
hangs together at least with our perceptions in a possible 
experience, and guided by our analogies we [p. 226] 
can, starting from our real experience, arrive at some 
other thing in the series of possible perceptions. Thus we 
know the existence of some magnetic matter pervading 
all bodies from the perception of the attracted iron filings, 
though our organs are so constituted as to render an im- 



j84 Transce?ide?ital Analytic 

mediate perception of that matter impossible. According 
to the laws of sensibility and the texture of our percep- 
tions, we ought in our experience to arrive at an immedi- 
ate empirical intuition of that magnetic matter, if only our 
senses were more acute, for their actual obtuseness does 
not concern the form of possible experience. Wherever, 
therefore, perception and its train can reach, according to 
empirical laws, there our knowledge also of the existence 
of things can reach. But if we do not begin with experi- 
ence, or do not proceed according to the laws of the em- 
pirical connection of phenomena, we are only making a 
vain display, as if we could guess and discover the exist- 
ence of anything. 1 

With reference to the third postulate we find that it 
refers to the material necessity in existence, and not to 
the merely formal and logical necessity in the connection 
of concepts. As it is impossible that the existence of the 
objects of the senses should ever be known entirely a 
priori, though it may be known to a certain extent a 
priori, namely, with reference to another already given 
existence, and as even in that case we can only [p. 227] 
arrive at such an existence as must somewhere be con- 
tained in the whole of the experience of which the given 
perception forms a part, it follows that the necessity of 
existence can never be known from concepts, but always 
from the connection only with what is actually perceived, 
according to general rules of experience. 2 Now, there is 
no existence that can be known as necessary under the 
condition of other given phenomena, except the existence 

1 See Supplement XXI. 

2 Insert man before gleichwohl, and leave out k'onnen at the end of the 
sentence. 



Trajzsccudcutal Analytic 185 

of effects from given causes, according to the laws of 
causality. It is not therefore the existence of things 
(substances), but the existence of their state, of which 
alone we can know the necessity, and this from other 
states only, which are given in perception, and according 
to the empirical laws of causality. Hence it follows that 
the criterium of necessity can only be found in the law of 
possible experience, viz. that everything that happens is 
determined a priori by its cause in phenomena. 1 We 
therefore know in nature the necessity of those effects 
only of which the causes are given, and the character of 
necessity in existence never goes beyond the field of 
possible experience, and even there it does not apply to 
the existence of things, as substances, because such sub- 
stances can never be looked upon as empirical effects or 
as something that happens and arises. Necessity, there- 
fore, affects only the relations of phenomena [p. 228] 
according to the dynamical law of causality, and the pos- 
sibility, dependent upon it, of concluding a priori from a 
given existence (of a cause) to another existence (that of 
an effect). Thus the principle that everything which hap- 
pens is hypothetically necessary, subjects all the changes in 
the world to a* law, that is, to a rule of necessary existence, 
without which there would not even be such a thing as 
nature. Hence the proposition that nothing happens by 
blind chance {in mundo non datur casus) is an a priori law 
of nature, and so is likewise the other, that no necessity 
in nature is a blind, but always a conditional and there- 
fore an intelligible, necessity (uou datur fatutn). Both 
these are laws by which the mere play of changes is ren- 

1 Read settle Ursache instead of Hire. 



i%6 Transcendental Analytic 

dered subject to a nature of tilings (as phenomena), or, 
what is the same, to that unity of the understanding in 
which alone they can belong to experience, as the synthet- 
ical unity of phenomena. Both are dynamical principles. 
The former is in reality a consequence of the principle 
of causality (the second of the analogies of experience). 
The latter is one of the principles of modality, which to 
the determination of causality adds the concept of neces- 
sity, which itself is subject to a rule of the understanding. 
The principle of continuity rendered every break in the 
series of phenomena (changes) impossible (in mundo non 
datur saltus), and likewise any gap between two [p. 229] 
phenomena in the whole of our empirical intuitions in 
space (non datnr hiatus). For so we may express the 
proposition that nothing can enter into experience to 
prove a vacuum, or even to admit it as a possible part of 
empirical synthesis. For the vacuum, which one may 
conceive as outside the field of possible experience (the 
world), can never come before the tribunal of the under- 
standing which has to decide on such questions only as 
concern the use to be made of given phenomena for em- 
pirical knowledge. It is in reality a problem of that ideal 
reason which goes beyond the sphere of a possible experi- 
ence, and wants to form an opinion of that which sur- 
rounds and limits experience, and will therefore have to be 
considered in our transcendental Dialectic. With regard 
to the four propositions (in mundo non datur hiatus, non 
datus saltus, non datur casus, non datur fatum), it would be 
easy to represent each of them, as well as all principles of 
a transcendental origin, according to the order of the cate- 
gories, and thus to assign its proper place to every one 
of them. But, after what has been said before, the versed 



Transcendental Analytic 187 

and expert reader will find it easy to do this himself, and to 
discover the proper method for it. They all simply agree 
in this, that they admit nothing in our empirical synthesis 
that would in any way run counter to the understanding, and 
to the continuous cohesion of all phenomena, that is, to the 
unity of its concepts. For it is the understand- [p. 230] 
ing alone through which the unity of experience, in which 
all perceptions must have their place, becomes possible. 

Whether the field of possibility be larger than the field 
which contains everything which is real, and whether this 
again be larger than the field of what is necessary, are 
curious questions and admitting of a synthetical solution, 
which questions however are to be brought before the 
tribunal of reason only. They really come to this, whether 
all things, as phenomena, belong to the sphere of one 
experience, of which every given perception forms a part, 
that could not be connected with any other phenomena, 
or whether my perceptions can ever belong to more than 
one possible experience (in its general connection). The 
understanding in reality does nothing but give to experi- 
ence a rule a priori, according to the subjective and formal 
conditions of sensibility and apperception, which alone 
render experience possible. Other forms of intuition 
(different from space and time), and other forms of the 
understanding (different from the discursive forms of 
thought or conceptual knowledge), even if they were pos- 
sible, we could in no wise render conceivable or intelli- 
gible to ourselves ; and even if we could, they would never 
belong to experience, the only field of knowledge in which 
objects are given to us. Whether there be [p. 231] 
therefore other perceptions but those that belong to our 
whole possible exp3rience, whether there be in fact a 



1 88 Transcendental Analytic 

completely new field of matter, can never be determined 
by the understanding, which is only concerned with the 
synthesis of what is given. 

The poverty of the usual arguments by which we con- 
struct a large empire of possibility of which all that is real 
(the objects of experience) forms but a small segment, is 
but too apparent. When we say that all that is real is 
possible, we arrive, according to the logical rules of inver- 
sion, at the merely particular proposition that some possible 
is real, and thus seem to imply that much is possible that 
is not real. Nay, it seems as if we might extend the num- 
ber of things possible beyond that of things real, simply 
on the ground that something must be added to the pos- 
sible to make it real. But this addition to the possible I 
cannot recognise, because what would thus be added to 
the possible, would be really the impossible. It is only 
to my understanding that anything can be added concern- 
ing the agreement with the formal conditions of experi- 
ence, and what can be added is the connection with some 
perception ; and whatever is connected with such a per- 
ception, according to empirical laws, is real, though it may 
not be perceived immediately. But that, in constant con- 
nection with what is given us in experience, [p. 232] 
there should be another series of phenomena, and there- 
fore more than one all-embracing experience, cannot pos- 
sibly be concluded from what is given us, and still less, 
if nothing is given us, because nothing can be thought 
without some kind of material. What is possible only 
under conditions which themselves are possible only, is 
not possible in the full sense of the word, not therefore 
in the sense in which we ask whether the possibility of 
things can extend beyond the limits of experience. ' 



Transcendental Analytic 189 

I have only touched on these questions in order to leave 
no gap in what are commonly supposed to be the concepts 
of the understanding. But absolute possibility (which 
has no regard for the formal conditions of experience) is 
really no concept of the understanding, and can never 
be used empirically, but belongs to reason alone, which 
goes beyond all possible empirical use of the under- 
standing. We have therefore made these few critical 
remarks only, leaving the subject itself unexplained for 
the present. 

And here, when I am on the point of concluding this 
fourth number and at the same time the system of all 
principles of the pure understanding, I think I ought to 
explain why I call the principles of modality postulates. 
I do not take this term in the sense which has [p. 233] 
been given to it by some modern philosophical writers, and 
which is opposed to the sense in which mathematicians 
take it, viz. that to postulate should mean to represent a 
proposition as certain without proof or justification ; for if 
we were to admit with regard to synthetical propositions, 
however evident they may appear, that they should meet 
with unreserved applause, without any deduction, and on 
their own authority only, all criticism of the understanding 
would be at an end. And as there is no lack of bold 
assertions, which public opinion does not decline to accept, 
(this acceptance being, however, no credential), our under- 
standing would be open to every fancy, and could not 
refuse its sanction to claims which demand admission as 
real axioms in the same confident tone, though without 
any substantial reasons. If therefore a condition a priori 
is to be synthetically joined to the concept of a thing, it 
will be indispensable that, if not a proof, at least a deduc- 



IQO Transcendental Analytic 

tion of the legitimacy of such an assertion, should be 
forthcoming. 

The principles of modality, however, are not objectively 
synthetical, because the predicates of possibility, reality, 
and necessity do not in the least increase the concept of 
which they are predicated, by adding anything to its rep- 
resentation. But as nevertheless they are synthetical, 
they are so subjectively only, i.e. they add to the [p. 234] 
concept of a (real) thing, without predicating anything new, 
the peculiar faculty of knowledge from which it springs 
and on which it depends, so that, if in the understanding 
the concept is only connected with the formal conditions 
of experience, its object is called possible ; if it is con- 
nected with perception (sensation as the material of the 
senses), and through it determined by the understanding, 
its object is called real ; while, if it is determined through 
the connection of perceptions, according to concepts, its 
object is called necessary. The principles of modality 
therefore predicate nothing of a concept except the act 
of the faculty of knowledge by which it is produced. 
In mathematics a postulate means a practical proposi- 
tion, containing nothing but a synthesis by which we 
first give an object to ourselves and produce its concept, 
as if, for instance, we draw a circle with a given line 
from a given point in the plane. Such a proposition 
cannot be proved, because the process required for it is 
the very process by which we first produce the concept 
of such a figure. We may therefore with the same right 
postulate the principles of modality, because they never 
increase 1 the concept of a thing, but indicate the manner 

1 No doubt by reality I assert more than by possibility, but not in the thing 
itself, which can never contain more in its reality than what is contained in 



Transcendental Analytic 191 

only in which the concept was joined with our faculty of 
knowledge. 1 [p. 235] 

its complete possibility. While possibility is only the positing of a thing in 
reference to the understanding (in its empirical use), reality is, at the same 
time, a connection of it with perception. 
1 See Supplement XXII. 



THE 

TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE 

OF THE 

FACULTY OF JUDGMENT 

OR 

ANALYTIC OF PRINCIPLES 
CHAPTER III 

ON THE GROUND OF DISTINCTION OF ALL SUBJECTS INTO 
PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA 

We have now not only traversed the whole domain of 
the pure understanding, and carefully examined each part 
of it, but we have also measured its extent, and assigned 
to everything in it its proper place. This domain, how- 
ever, is an island and enclosed by nature itself within 
limits that can never be changed. It is the country of 
truth (a very attractive name), but surrounded by a wide 
and stormy ocean, the true home of illusion, where many 
a fog bank and ice that soon melts away tempt us to be- 
lieve in new lands, while constantly deceiving the advent- 
urous mariner with vain hopes, and involving [p. 236] 
him in adventures which he can never leave, and yet can 
never bring to an end. Before we venture ourselves on 
this sea, in order to explore it on every side, and to find 
out whether anything is to be hoped for there, it will be 

192 



Transcendental Analytic 193 

useful to glance once more at the map of that country 
which we are about to leave, and to ask ourselves, first, 
whether we might not be content with what it contains, 
nay, whether we must not be content with it, supposing 
that there is no solid ground anywhere else on which we 
could settle ; secondly, by what title we possess even that 
domain, and may consider ourselves safe against all hos- 
tile claims. Although we have sufficiently answered these 
questions in the course of the analytic, a summary reca- 
pitulation of their solutions may help to strengthen our 
conviction, by uniting all arguments in one point. 

We have seen that the understanding possesses every- 
thing which it draws from itself, without borrowing from 
experience, for no other purpose but for experience. The 
principles of the pure understanding, whether constitutive 
a priori (as the mathematical) or simply relative (as the 
dynamical), contain nothing but, as it were, the pure 
schema of possible experience; for that experi- [p. 237] 
ence derives its unity from that synthetical unity alone 
which the understanding originally and spontaneously 
imparts to the synthesis of imagination, with reference 
to apperception, and to which all phenomena, as data 
of a possible knowledge, must conform a pi'ioj'i. But 
although these rules of the understanding are not only 
true a priori, but the very source of all truth, that is, of 
the agreement of our knowledge with objects, because 
containing the conditions of the possibility of experi- 
ence, as the complete sphere of all knowledge in which 
objects can be given to us, nevertheless we do not seem 
to be content with hearing only what is true, but want to 
know a great deal more. If therefore this critical investi- 
gation does not teach us any more than what, even with- 
o 



!Q4 Transcendental Analytic 

out such subtle researches, we should have practised 
ourselves in the purely empirical use of the understand- 
ing, it would seem as if the advantages derived from it 
were hardly worth the labour. One might reply that 
nothing would be more prejudicial to the enlargement 
of our knowledge than that curiosity which, before enter- 
ing upon any researches, wishes to know beforehand the 
advantages likely to accrue from them, though quite un- 
able as yet to form the least conception of such advan- 
tages, even though they were" placed before our eyes. 
There is, however, one advantage in this transcendental 
investigation which can be rendered intelligible, [p. 238] 
nay, even attractive to the most troublesome and reluctant 
apprentice, namely this, that the understanding confined 
to its empirical use only and unconcerned with regard to 
the sources of its own knowledge, may no doubt fare very 
well in other respects, but can never determine for itself 
the limits of its own use and know what is inside or out- 
side its own sphere. It is for that purpose that such 
profound investigations are required as we have just insti- 
tuted. If the understanding cannot decide whether cer- 
tain questions lie within its own horizon or not, it can 
never feel certain with regard to its claims and posses- 
sions, but must be prepared for many humiliating correc- 
tions, when constantly transgressing, as it certainly will, 
the limits of its own domain, and losing itself in follies 
and fancies. 

That the understanding cannot make any but an empir- 
ical, and never a transcendental, use of all its principles 
a priori, nay, of all its concepts, is a proposition which, 
if thoroughly understood, leads indeed to most important 
consequences. What we call the transcendental use of a 



Transcendental Analytic 195 

concept in any proposition is its being referred to things 
in general and to things by themselves, while its empirical 
use refers to phenomena only, that is, to objects of a pos- 
sible experience. That the latter use alone is admissible 
will be clear from the following considerations, [p. 239] 
What is required for every concept is, first, the logical 
form of a concept (of thought) in general ; and, secondly, 
the possibility of an object to which it refers. Without 
the latter, it has no sense, and is entirely empty, though 
it may still contain the logical function by which a concept 
can be formed out of any data. The only way in which 
an object can be given to a concept is in intuition, and 
though a pure intuition is possible a priori and before the 
object, yet even that pure intuition can receive its object, 
and with it its objective validity, by an empirical intuition 
only, of which it is itself nothing but the form. All con- 
cepts, therefore, and with them all principles, though they 
may be possible a priori, refer nevertheless to empirical 
intuitions, that is, to data of a possible experience. With- 
out this, they can claim no objective validity, but are a 
mere play, whether of the imagination or of the under- 
standing with their respective representations. Let us 
take the concepts of mathematics as an example, and, 
first, with regard to pure intuitions. Although such 
principles as 'space has three dimensions,' 'between two 
points there can be only one straight line,' as well as the 
representation of the object with which that science is oc- 
cupied, may be produced in the mind a priori, they would 
have no meaning, if we were not able at all times [p. 240] 
to show their meaning as applied to phenomena (empirical 
objects). It is for this reason that an abstract concept is 
required to be made sensuous, that is, that its correspond- 



igO Transcendental Analytic 

ing object is required to be shown in intuition, because, 
without this, the concept (as people say) is without sense, 
that is, without meaning. Mathematics fulfil this require- 
ment by .the construction of the figure, which is a phe- 
nomenon present to the senses (although constructed a 
priori). In the same science the concept of quantity finds 
its support and sense in number ; and this in turn in the 
fingers, the beads of the abacus, or in strokes and points 
which can be presented to the eyes. The concept itself 
was produced a priori, together with all the synthetical 
principles or formulas which can be derived from such 
concepts; but their use and their relation to objects can 
nowhere be found except in experience, of which those 
concepts contain a priori the (formal) possibility only. 

That this is the case with all categories and with all the 
principles drawn from them, becomes evident from the 
fact that we could not define any one of them (really, 
that is, make conceivable the possibility of their object), 1 
without at once having recourse to the conditions of sen- 
sibility or the form of phenomena, to which, as their only 
possible objects, these categories must necessarily be 
restricted, it being impossible, if we take away [p. 241] 
these conditions, to assign to them any meaning, that is, 
any relation to an object, or to make it intelligible to 
ourselves by an example what kind of thing could be 
intended by such concepts. 

[When representing the table of the categories, we dis- 
pensed with the definition of every one of them, because 
at that time it seemed unnecessary for our purpose, which 
concerned their synthetical use only, and because entail- 

1 Additions of the Second Edition. 



Transcendental Analytic 197 

ing responsibilities which we were not bound to incur. 
This was not a mere excuse, but a very important pru- 
dential rule, viz. not to rush into definitions, and to attempt 
or pretend completeness or precision in the definition of 
a concept, when one or other of its characteristic marks 
is sufficient without a complete enumeration of all that 
constitute the whole concept. Now, however, we can 
perceive that this caution had even a deeper ground, 
namely, that we could not have defined them, even if we 
had wished ; : for, if we remove all conditions of [p. 242] 
sensibility, which distinguish them as the concepts of 
a possible empirical use, and treat them as concepts of 
things in general (therefore as of transcendental use), 
nothing remains but to regard the logical function in 
judgments as the condition of the possibility of the things 
themselves, without the slightest indication as to where 
they could have their application and their object, or how 
they could have any meaning or objective validity in the 
pure understanding, apart from sensibility.] 2 

No one can explain the concept of quantity in general, 
except, it may be, by saying that it is the determination 
of an object, by which we may know how many times 
the one is supposed to exist in it. But this ' how many 
times ' is based on successive repetition, that is on time, 
and on the synthesis in it of the homogeneous. 

1 I am treating here of the real definition, which not only puts in place of 
the name of a thing other and more intelligible words, but that which contains 
a clear mark by which the object (dejinituni) can at all times be safely recog- 
nised, and by which the defined concept becomes fit for practical use. A real 
definition {Realarklarung) must therefore render clear the concept itself, and 
its objective reality also. Of this kind are the mathematical explanations 
which represent an object in intuition, according to its concept. 

2 Read nimmt instead of nehmen, and k'dnnen instead of k'onne. 



198 Transcendental Analytic 

Reality, again, can only be explained in opposition 
to a negation, if we think of time (as containing all 
being) being either filled or empty. 

Were I to leave out permanence (which means ex- 
istence at all times), nothing would remain of my con- 
cept of substance but the logical representation of 
a subject which I think I can realise by imagining 
something which is a subject only, without [p. 243] 
being a predicate of anything. But in this case we 
should not only be ignorant of all conditions under 
which this logical distinction could belong to any- 
thing, but we should be unable to make any use of 
it or draw any conclusions from it, because no object 
is thus determined for the use of this concept, and no 
one can tell whether such a concept has any meaning 
at all. 

Of the concept of cause also (if I leave out time, in 
which something follows on something else by rule) 
I should find no more in the pure category than 
that it is something which enables us to conclude 
the existence of something else, so that it would not 
only be impossible to distinguish cause and effect 
from each other, but the concept of cause would 
possess no indication as to how it can be applied 
to any object, because, in order to form any such 
conclusion, certain conditions require to be known 
of which the concept itself tells us nothing. The 
so-called principle that everything contingent has a 
cause, comes no doubt before us with great solemnity 
and self-assumed dignity. But, if I ask what you 
understand by contingent and you answer, something 
of which the non-existence is possible, I. should be 



Transcendental Analytic 199 

glad to know how you can recognise this possibility of 
non-existence, if you do not represent to yourselves, 
in the series of phenomena, some kind of succession, 
and in it an existence that follows upon non-existence 
(or vice versa), and consequently a change ? To say 
that the non-existence of a thing is not self- [p. 244] 
contradictory is but a lame appeal to a logical condi- 
tion which, though it is necessary for the concept, 
yet is by no means sufficient for its real possibility. 
I can perfectly well remove in thought every existing 
substance, without contradicting myself, but I can by 
no means conclude from this as to its objective con- 
tingency in its existence, that is, the possibility of 
its non-existence in itself. 

As regards the concept of community, it is easy to 
see that, as the pure categories of substance and 
causality admit of no explanation that would deter- 
mine their object, neither could such an explanation 
apply to the reciprocal causality in the relation of 
substances to each other {commercium). 

As to possibility, existence, and necessity, no one 
has yet been able to explain them, except by a man- 
ifest tautology, so long as their definition is to be 
exclusively drawn from the pure understanding. To 
substitute the transcendental possibility of things (when 
an object corresponds to a concept) by the logical 
possibility of the concept (when the concept does not 
contradict itself) is a quibble such as could deceive 
and satisfy the inexperienced only. 

[It seems to be something strange and even illogical 1 

1 The passage from ' It seems to be' to 'objective concepts' is left out in 
the Second Edition, and replaced by a short note, see Supplement XXIII. 



200 Transcendental Analytic 

that there should be a concept which must have a 
meaning, and yet is incapable of any explanation. 
But the case of these categories is peculiar, because 
it is only by means of the general sensuous condition 
that they can acquire a definite meaning, and a refer- 
ence to any objects. That condition being [p. 245] 
left out in the pure category, it follows that it can 
contain nothing but the logical function by which the 
manifold is brought into a concept. By means of this 
function, that is, the pure form of the concept, nothing 
can be known or distinguished as to the object belong- 
ing to it, because the sensuous condition, under which 
alone objects can belong to it, has been removed. Thus 
we see that the categories require, besides the pure 
concept of the understanding, certain determinations of 
their application to sensibility in general (schemata). 
Without them, they would not be concepts by which 
an object can be known and distinguished from other 
objects, but only so many ways of thinking an object 
for possible intuitions, and giving to it, according to 
one of the functions of the understanding, its meaning 
(certain requisite conditions being given). They are 
needed to define an object, and cannot therefore be de- 
fined themselves. The logical functions of judgments 
in general, namely, unity and plurality, assertion and 
negation, subject and predicate, cannot be defined with- 
out arguing in a circle, because the definition would 
itself be a judgment and contain these very functions. 
The pure categories are nothing but representations of 
things in general, so far as the manifold in intuition 
must be thought by one or the other of these func- 
tions. Thus, magnitude is the determination which can 



Transcendental Analytic 201 

[only be thought by a judgment possessing [p. 246] 
quantity (judicium commune) ; reality, the determination 
which can only be thought by an affirmative judgment; 
while substance is that which, in regard to intuition, 
must be the last subject of all other determinations. 
With all this it remains perfectly undetermined, what 
kind of things they may be with regard to which we 
have to use one rather than another of these func- 
tions, so that, without the condition of sensuous intui- 
tion, for which they supply the synthesis, the categories 
have no relation to any definite object, cannot define 
any object, and consequently have not in themselves 
the validity of objective concepts.] 

From this it follows incontestably, that the pure 
concepts of the understanding never admit of a tran- 
scendental, but only of an empirical use, and that the 
principles of the pure understanding can only be re- 
ferred, as general conditions of a possible experience, 
to objects of the senses, never to things by themselves 
(without regard to the manner in which we have to 
look at them). 

Transcendental Analytic has therefore yielded us this 
important result, that the understanding a priori can never 
do more than anticipate the form of a possible experience ; 
and as nothing can be an object of experience except the 
phenomenon, it follows that the understanding can never 
go beyond the limits of sensibility, within which alone ob- 
jects are given to us. Its principles are prin- [p. 247] 
ciples for the exhibition of phenomena only ; and the 
proud name of Ontology, which presumes to supply in a 
systematic form different kinds of synthetical knowledge a 
priori of things by themselves (for instance the principle 



202 Transcendental Analytic 

of causality), must be replaced by the more modest name 
of a mere Analytic of the pure understanding. 

Thought is the act of referring a given intuition to an 
object. If the mode of such intuition is not given, the 
object is called transcendental, and the concept of the 
understanding admits then of a transcendental use only, in 
producing a unity in the thought of the manifold in gen- 
eral. A pure category therefore, in which every condition 
of sensuous intuition, the only one that is possible for us, is 
left out, cannot determine an object, but only the thought 
of an object in general, according to different modes. 
Now, if we want to use a concept, we require in addition 
some function of the faculty of judgment, by which an 
object is subsumed under a concept, consequently the at 
least formal condition under which something can be given 
in intuition. If this condition of the faculty of judgment 
(schema) is wanting, all subsumption is impossible, because 
nothing is given that could be subsumed under the con- 
cept. The purely transcendental use of categories there- 
fore is in reality of no use at all, and has no definite or 
even, with regard to its form only, definable object. Hence 
it follows that a pure category is not fit for any [p. 248] 
synthetical a priori principle, and that the principles of 
the pure understanding admit of empirical only, never of 
transcendental application, nay, that no synthetical prin- 
ciples a priori are possible beyond the field of possible 
experience. 

It might therefore be advisable to express ourselves in 
the following way : the pure categories, without the formal 
conditions of sensibility, have a transcendental character 
only, but do not admit of any transcendental use, because 
such use in itself is impossible, as the categories are 



Transcendental Analytic 203 

deprived of all the conditions of being used in judgments, 
that is, of the formal conditions of the subsumption of 
any possible object under these concepts. As therefore 
(as pure categories) they are not meant to be used empiri- 
cally, and cannot be used transcendentally, they admit, if 
separated from sensibility, of no use at all ; that is, they 
cannot be applied to any possible object, and are nothing 
but the pure form of the use of the understanding with 
reference to objects in general, and of thought, without 
ever enabling us to think or determine any object by their 
means alone. 

[Appearances, 1 so far as they are thought as objects 
under the unity of the categories, are called phenomena. 
But if I admit things which are objects of the [p. 249] 
understanding only, and nevertheless can be given as 
objects of an intuition, though not of sensuous intuition 
(as coram inticitu intellectual^ such things would be called 
Noumena (intelligibilia). 

One might feel inclined to think that the concept of 
Phenomena, as limited by the transcendental aesthetic, 
suggested by itself the objective reality of the Noumena, 
and justified a division of objects into phenomena and 
noumena, and consequently of the world into a sensible 
and intelligible world (inundus sensibilis et intelligibilis) ; 
and this in such a way that the distinction between the 
two should not refer to the logical form only of a more or 
less clear knowledge of one and the same object, but to a 
difference in their original presentation to our knowledge, 
which makes them to differ in themselves from each other 
in kind. For if the senses only represent to us something 

1 The passage from ' Appearances ' to ' given to me in intuition ' is left out 
in the Second Edition, and replaced by Supplement XXIV. 



204 Transcendental Analytic 

as it appears, that something must by itself also be a 
thing, and an object of a non-sensuous intuition, i.e. of the 
understanding. That is, there must be a kind of know- 
ledge in which there is no sensibility, and which alone 
possesses absolute objective reality, representing objects 
as they are, while through the empirical use of our under- 
standing we know things only as they appear. Hence it 
would seem to follow that, beside the empirical [p. 250] 
use of the categories (limited by sensuous conditions), 
there was another one, pure and yet objectively valid, and 
that we could not say, as we have hitherto done, that our 
knowledge of the pure understanding contained nothing 
but principles for the exhibition of phenomena, which, 
even a priori, could not apply to anything but the formal 
possibility of experience. Here, in fact, quite a new field 
would seem to be open, a world, as it were, realised in 
thought (nay, according to some, even in intuition), which 
would be a more, and not a less, worthy object for the 
pure understanding. 

All our representations are no doubt referred by the 
understanding to some sort of object, and as phenomena 
are nothing but representations, the understanding refers 
them to a something, as the object of our sensuous intui- 
tion, this something being however the transcendental ob- 
ject only. This means a something equal to x, of which 
we do not, nay, with the present constitution of our under- 
standing, cannot know anything, but which 1 can only 
serve, as a correlatum of the unity of apperception, for 
the unity of the manifold in sensuous intuition, by means 
of which the understanding unites the manifold into the 

1 Read welches instead of welcher. 



Transcendental Analytic 205 

concept of an object. This transcendental object cannot 
be separated from the sensuous data, because in that case 
nothing would remain by which it could be [p. 251] 
thought. It is not therefore an object of knowledge in 
itself, but only the representation of phenomena, under the 
concept of an object in general, which can be defined by 
the manifold of sensuous intuition. 

For this very reason the categories do not represent a 
peculiar object, given to the understanding only, but serve 
only to define the transcendental object (the concept of 
something in general) by that which is given us through 
the senses, in order thus to know empirically phenomena 
under the concepts of objects. 

What then is the cause why people, not satisfied with 
the substratum of sensibility, have added to the phe- 
nomena the noumena, which the understanding only is 
supposed to be able to realise ? It is this, that sensibility 
and its sphere, that is the sphere of phenomena, is so lim- 
ited by the understanding itself that it should not refer 
to things by themselves, but only to the mode in which 
things appear to us, in accordance with our own sub- 
jective qualification. This was the result of the whole 
transcendental aesthetic, and it really follows quite nat- 
urally from the concept of a phenomenon in general, that 
something must correspond to it, which in itself is not a 
phenomenon, because a phenomenon cannot be anything 
by itself, apart from our mode of representation, [p. 252] 
Unless therefore we are. to move in a constant circle, we 
must admit that the very word plienomenon indicates a 
relation to something the immediate representation of 
which is no doubt sensuous, but which nevertheless, even 
without this qualification of our sensibility (on which the 



206 Transcendental Analytic 

form of our intuition is founded) must be something by 
itself, that is an object independent of our sensibility. 

Hence arises the concept of a noumenon, which how- 
ever is not positive, nor a definite knowledge of anything, 
but which implies only the thinking of something, without 
taking any account of the form of sensuous intuition. 
But in order that a noumenon may signify a real object 
that can be distinguished from all phenomena, it is not 
enough that I should free my thought of all conditions 
of sensuous intuition, but I must besides have some reason 
for admitting another kind of intuition besides the sen- 
suous, in which such an object can be given; otherwise 
my thought would be empty, however free it may be from 
contradictions. It is true that we were not able to prove 
that the sensuous is the only possible intuition, though it 
is so for us : but neither could we prove that another kind 
of intuition was possible; and although our thought may 
take no account of any sensibility, the question always 
remains whether, after that, it is not a mere [p. 253] 
form of a concept, and whether any real object would thus 
be left. 

The object to which I refer the phenomenon in general 
is the transcendental object, that is, the entirely indefinite 
thought of something in general. This cannot be called, 
the noumenon, for I know nothing of what it is by itself, 
and have no conception of it, except as the object of sen- 
suous intuition in general, which is therefore the same for 
all phenomena. I cannot lay hold of it by any of the 
categories, for these are valid for empirical intuitions only, 
in order to bring them under the concept of an object in 
general. A pure use of the categories is no doubt pos- 
sible, that is, not self-contradictory, but it has no kind of 



Transcendental Analytic 207 

objective validity, because it refers to no intuition to which 
it is meant to impart the unity of an object. The cate- 
gories remain for ever mere functions of thought by which 
no object can be given to me, but by which I can only 
think whatever may be given to me in intuition.] 

If all thought (by means of categories) is taken away 
from empirical knowledge, no knowledge of any object 
remains, because nothing can be thought by mere intui- 
tion, and the mere fact that there is within me an affection 
of my sensibility, establishes in no way any relation of 
such a representation to any object. If, on the contrary, 
all intuition is taken away, there always remains [p. 254] 
the form of thought, that is, the mode of determining an 
object for the manifold of a possible intuition. In this 
sense the categories may be said to extend further than 
sensuous intuition, because they can think objects in 
general without any regard to the special mode of sensi- 
bility in which they may be given ; but they do not thus 
prove a larger sphere of objects, because we cannot admit 
that such objects can be given, without admitting the 
possibility of some other but sensuous intuition, for which 
we have no right whatever. 

I call a concept problematic, if it is not self-contra- 
dictory, and if, as limiting other concepts, it is connected 
with other kinds of knowledge, while its objective reality 
cannot be known in any way. Now the concept of a 
noumenon, that is of a thing which can never be thought 
as an object of the senses, but only as a thing by itself 
(by the pure understanding), is not self-contradictory, 
because we cannot maintain that sensibility is the only 
form of intuition. That concept is also necessary, to 
prevent sensuous intuition from extending to things by 



208 Transcendental Analytic 

themselves ; that is, in order to limit the objective validity 
of sensuous knowledge (for all the rest to which sensuous 
intuition does not extend is called noumenon, for [p. 255] 
the very purpose of showing that sensuous knowledge can- 
not extend its domain over everything that can be thought 
by the understanding). But, after all, we cannot under- 
stand the possibility of such noumena, and whatever lies 
beyond the sphere of phenomena is (to us) empty ; that is, 
we have an understanding which problematically extends 
beyond that sphere, but no intuition, nay not even the con- 
ception of a possible intuition, by which, outside the field 
of sensibility, objects could be given to us, and our under- 
standing could extend beyond that sensibility in its asser- 
tory use. The concept of a noumenon is therefore merely 
limitative, and intended to keep the claims of sensibility 
within proper bounds, therefore of negative use only. 
But it is not a mere arbitrary fiction, but closely con- 
nected with the limitation of sensibility, though incapable 
of adding anything positive to the sphere of the senses. 

A real division of objects into phenomena and noumena, 
and of the world into a sensible and intelligible world (in 
a positive sense), 1 is therefore quite inadmissible, although 
concepts may very well be divided into sensuous and intel- 
lectual. For no objects can be assigned to the intellectual 
concepts, nor can they be represented as objectively valid. 
If we drop the senses, how are we to make it [p. 256] 
conceivable that our categories (which would be the only 
remaining concepts for noumena) have any meaning at 
all, considering that, in order to refer them to any object, 
something more must be given than the mere unity of 

1 Addition of the Second Edition. 



Transcendental Analytic 209 

thought, namely, a possible intuition, to which the cate- 
gories could be applied ? With all this the concept of a 
noumenon, if taken as problematical only, remains not 
only admissible, but, as a concept to limit the sphere of 
sensibility, indispensable. In this case, however, it is not 
a particular intelligible object for our understanding, but 
an understanding to which it could belong is itself a prob- 
lem, if we ask how it could know an object, not discursively 
by means of categories, but intuitively, and yet in a non- 
sensuous intuition, — a process of which we could not 
understand even the bare possibility. Our understanding 
thus acquires a kind of negative extension, that is, it 
does not become itself limited by sensibility, but, on the 
contrary, limits it, by calling things by themselves (not 
considered as phenomena) noumena. In doing this, it im- 
mediately proceeds to prescribe limits to itself, by admit- 
ting that it cannot know these noumena by means'of the 
categories, but can only think of them under the name of 
something unknown. 

In the writings of modern philosophers, however, I meet 
with a totally different use of the terms of mundns sensi- 
bilis and intelligibilis} totally different from the mean- 
ing assigned to these terms by the ancients, [p. 257] 
Here all difficulty seems to disappear. But the fact is, 
that there remains nothing but mere word-mongery. In 
accordance with this, some people have been pleased to 
call the whole of phenomena, so far as they are seen, the 
world of sense ; but so far as their connection, according 
to general laws of the understanding, is taken into account, 
the world of the understanding. Theoretical astronomy, 

1 An additional note in the Second Edition is given in Supplement XXV. 
P 



210 Transcendental Analytic 

which only teaches the actual observation of the starry 
heavens, would represent the former; contemplative as- 
tronomy, on the contrary (taught according to the Coperni- 
can system, or, it may be, according to Newton's laws of 
gravitation), the latter, namely, a purely intelligible world. 
But this twisting of words is a mere sophistical excuse, in 
order to avoid a troublesome question, by changing its 
meaning according to one's own convenience. Under- 
standing and reason may be applied to phenomena, but 
it is very questionable whether they can be applied at all 
to an object which is not a phenomenon, but a nou- 
menon; and it is this, when the object is represented as 
purely intelligible, that is, as given to the understanding 
only, and not to the senses. The question therefore is 
whether, besides the empirical use of the understanding 
(even in the Newtonian view of the world), a transcen- 
dental use is possible, referring to the noumenon, as its 
object; and that question we have answered decidedly in 
the negative. 

When we therefore say that the senses rep- [p. 258] 
resent objects to us as they appear, and the understand- 
ing as they are, the latter is not to be taken in a transcen- 
dental, but in a purely empirical meaning, namely, as to 
how they, as objects of experience, must be represented, 
according to the regular connection of phenomena, and 
not according to what they may be, as objects of the pure 
understanding, apart from their relation to possible experi- 
ence, and therefore to our senses. This will always remain 
unknown to us ; nay, we shall never know whether such 
a transcendental and exceptional knowledge is possible 
at all, at least as comprehended under our ordinary cate- 
gories. With us understanding and sensibility cannot 



Trci7iscendental Analytic 211 

determine objects, unless they are joined together. If we 
separate them, we have intuitions without concepts, or 
concepts without intuitions, in both cases representations 
which we cannot refer to any definite object. 

If, after all these arguments, anybody should still hesi- 
tate to abandon the purely transcendental use of the cate- 
gories, let him try an experiment with them for framing 
any synthetical proposition. An analytical proposition 
does not in the least advance the understanding, which, 
as in such a proposition it is only concerned with what 
is already thought in the concept, does not ask whether 
the concept in itself has any reference to objects, or ex- 
presses only the unity of thought in general [p. 259] 
(this completely ignoring the manner in which an object 
may be given). The understanding in fact is satisfied if 
it knows what it contained in the concept of an object; 
it is indifferent as to the object to which the concept may 
refer. But let him try the experiment with any syntheti- 
cal and so-called transcendental proposition, as for in- 
stance, ' Everything that exists, exists as a substance, or 
as a determination inherent in it,' or ' Everything con- 
tingent exists as an effect of some other thing, namely, 
its cause,' etc. Now I ask, whence can the understand- 
ing take these synthetical propositions, as the concepts 
are to apply, not to some possible experience, but to 
things by themselves (noumena) ? Where is that third 
term to be found which is always required for a syn- 
thetical proposition, in order thus to join concepts which 
have no logical (analytical) relation with each other? It 
will be impossible to prove such a proposition, nay even 
to justify the possibility of any such pure assertion, with- 
out appealing to the empirical use of the understanding, 



212 Transcendental Analytic 

and thus renouncing entirely the so-called pure and non- 
sensuous judgment. There are no principles therefore 
according to which the concepts of pure and merely in- 
telligible objects could ever be applied, because we cannot 
imagine any way in which they could be given, and the 
problematic thought, which leaves a place open to them, 
serves only, like empty space, to limit the sphere of em- 
pirical principles, without containing or indicat- [p. 260] 
ing any other object of knowledge, lying beyond that 
sphere. 

APPENDIX 

Of the Amphiboly of Reflective Concepts, owing to 
the Confusion of the Empirical with the Tran- 
scendental Use of the Understanding 

Reflection (reflexio) is not concerned with objects them- 
selves, in order to obtain directly concepts of them, but is 
a state of the mind in which we set ourselves to discover 
the subjective conditions under which we may arrive at 
concepts. It is the consciousness of the relation of given 
representations to the various sources of our knowledge 
by which alone their mutual relation can be rightly de- 
termined. Before saying any more of our representa- 
tions, the first question is, to which faculty of knowledge 
they may all belong ; whether it is the understanding or 
the senses by which they are connected and compared. 
Many a judgment is accepted from mere habit, or made 
from inclination, and as no reflection precedes or even 
follows it critically, the judgment is supposed [p. 261] 
to have had its origin in the understanding. It is not 
all judgments that require an investigation, that is, a 



Transcendental Analytic 213 

careful attention with regard to the grounds of their 
truth ; for if they are immediately certain, as for in- 
stance, that between two points there can be only one 
straight line, no more immediately certain marks of 
their truth than that which they themselves convey 
could be discovered. But all judgments, nay, all com- 
parisons, require reflection, that is, a discrimination of 
the respective faculty of knowledge to which any given 
concepts belong. The act by which I place in general 
the comparison of representations by the side of the 
faculty of knowledge to which that comparison be- 
longs, and by which I determine whether these repre- 
sentations are compared with each other as belonging 
to the pure understanding or to sensuous intuition, I 
call transcendental reflection. The relation in which the 
two concepts may stand to each other in one state of the 
mind is that of identity and difference, of agreement and 
opposition, of the internal and external, and finally of the 
determinable and the determination (matter and form). 
The right determination of that relation depends on the 
question in which faculty of knowledge they subjectively 
belong to each other, whether in sensibility or in the 
understanding. For the proper distinction of the latter 
is of great importance with regard to the manner in 
which the former must be considered. [p. 262] 

Before proceeding to form any objective judgments, we 
have to compare the concepts with regard to the identity 
(of many representations under one concept) as the founda- 
tion of general judgments, or with regard to their differ- 
ence as the foundation of particular judgments, or with 
regard to their agreement and opposition serving as the 
foundations of affirmative and negative judgments, etc. 



214 Transcendental Analytic 

For this reason it might seem that we ought to call 
these concepts concepts of comparison (conceptus com- 
parationis). But as, when the contents of concepts and 
not their logical form must be considered, that is, whether 
the things themselves are identical or different, in agree- 
ment or in opposition, etc., all things may have a two- 
fold relation to our faculty of knowledge, namely, either 
to sensibility or to the understanding, and as the manner 
in which they belong to one another depends on the place 
to which they belong, it follows that the transcendental 
reflection, that is the power of determining the relation 
of given representations to one or the other class of 
knowledge, can alone determine their mutual relation. 
Whether the things are identical or different, in agree- 
ment or opposition, etc., cannot be established at once 
by the concepts themselves by means of a mere com- 
parison (comparatio), but first of all by a proper discrimi- 
nation of that class of knowledge to which they belong, 
that is, by transcendental reflection. It might therefore be 
said, that logical reflection is a mere comparison, because 
it takes no account of the faculty of knowledge to which 
any given representations belong, and treats [p. 263] 
them, so far as they are all found in the mind, as 
homogeneous, while transcendental reflection (which re- 
fers to the objects themselves) supplies the possibility 
of an objective comparison of representations among 
themselves, and is therefore very different from the 
other, the faculty of knowledge to which they belong 
not being the same. This transcendental reflection is 
a duty from which no one can escape who wishes to 
form judgments a priori. We shall now take it in hand, 
and may hope thus to throw not a little light on the 
real business of the understanding. 



Transcendental Analytic 215 

I. Identity and Difference 

When an object is presented to us several times, but 
each time with the same internal determinations (qualitas 
et quantitas), it is, so long as it is considered as an object 
of the pure understanding, always one and the same, one 
thing, not many {nnmerica identitas). But if it is a phe- 
nomenon, a comparison of the concepts is of no conse- 
quence, and though everything may be identical with 
regard to the concepts, yet the difference of the place of 
this phenomenon at the same time is a sufficient ground 
for admitting the numerical difference of the object (of the 
senses). Thus, though there may be no internal difference 
whatever (either in quality or quantity) between two drops 
of water, yet the fact that they may be seen [p. 264] 
at the same time in different places is sufficient to 
establish their numerical difference. Leibniz took phe- 
nomena to be things by themselves, intelligibilia, that is, 
objects of the pure understanding (though, on account of 
the confused nature of their representations, he assigned 
to them the name of phenomena), and from that point 
of view his principle of their indiscernibility (principium 
identitas indiscernibilwm) could not be contested. As, 
however, they are objects of sensibility, and the use of 
the understanding with regard to them is not pure, but 
only empirical, their plurality and numerical diversity are 
indicated by space itself, as the condition of external 
phenomena. For one part of space, though it may be 
perfectly similar and equal to another, is still outside it, 
and for this very reason a part of space different from the 
first which, added to it, makes a larger space : and this 
applies to all things which exist at the same time in 



216 Transcendental Analytic 

different parts of space, however similar or equal they 
may be in other respects. 

II. Agreement and Opposition 

When reality is represented by the pure understanding 
only (realitas noumenon), no opposition can be conceived 
between realities, that is, no such relation that, if connected 
in one subject, they should annihilate the effects one of 
the other, as for instance 3 — 3=0. The real in [p. 265] 
the phenomena, on the contrary {realitas phenomenon) , 
may very well be in mutual opposition, and if connected 
in one subject, one may annihilate completely or in part 
the effect of the other, as in the case of two forces moving 
in the same straight line, either drawing or impelling a 
point in opposite directions, or in the case of pleasure, 
counterbalancing a certain amount of pain. 

III. The Internal and the External 

In an object of the pure understanding that only is 
internal which has no relation whatever (as regards its 
existence) to anything different from itself. The inner 
relations, on the contrary, of a substantia phenomeno7i in 
space are nothing but relations, and the substance itself 
a complex of mere relations. We only know substances 
in space through the forces which are active in a certain 
space, by either drawing others near to it (attraction) or 
by preventing others from penetrating into it (repulsion 
and impenetrability). Other properties constituting the 
concept of a substance appearing in space, and which we 
call matter, are unknown to us. As an object of the pure 
understanding, on the contrary, every substance must have 




Transcendental Aiialytic 217 

internal determinations and forces bearing on the internal 
reality. But what other internal accidents can I think, 
except those which my own internal sense pre- [p. 266] 
sents to me, namely, something which is either itself 
thought, or something analogous to it? Hence Leibniz 
represented all substances (as he conceived them as nou- 
mena), even the component parts of matter (after having 
in thought removed from them everything implying exter- 
nal relation, and therefore composition also), as simple 
subjects endowed with powers of representation, in one 
word, as monads. 

IV. Matter and Form 

These are two concepts which are treated as the foun- 
dation of all other reflection, so inseparably are they con- 
nected with every act of the understanding. The former 
denotes the determinable in general, the latter its deter- 
mination (both in a purely transcendental meaning, all 
differences in that which is given and the mode in which 
it is determined being left out of consideration). Logi- 
cians formerly called the universal, matter ; the specific dif- 
ference, form. In every judgment the given concepts may 
be called the logical matter (for a judgment) ; their relation, 
by means of the copula, the form of a judgment. In every 
being its component parts (essentialia) are the matter ; the 
mode in which they are connected in it, the essential form. 
With respect to things in general, unlimited reality was 
regarded as the matter of all possibility, and the limitation 
thereof (negation) as that form by which one [p. 267] 
thing is distinguished from another, according to transcen- 
dental concepts. The understanding demands first that 
something should be given (at least in concept) in order to 



218 Transcendental Analytic 

be able afterwards to determine it in a certain manner. 
In the concept of the pure understanding therefore, matter 
comes before form, and Leibniz in consequence first as- 
sumed things (monads), and within them an internal power 
of representation, in order afterwards to found thereon 
their external relation, and the community of their states, 
that is, of their representations. In this way space and time 
were possible only, the former through the relation of sub- 
stances, the latter through the connection of their deter- 
minations among themselves, as causes and effects. And 
so it would be indeed, if the pure understanding could be 
applied immediately to objects, and if space and time were 
determinations of things by themselves. But if they are 
sensuous intuitions only, in which we determine all objects 
merely as phenomena, then it follows that the form of 
intuition (as a subjective quality of sensibility) comes 
before all matter (sensations), that space and time there- 
fore come before all phenomena, and before all data of 
experience, and render in fact all experience possible. As 
an intellectual philosopher Leibniz could not endure that 
this form should come before things and determine their 
possibility : a criticism quite just when he assumed that we 
see things as they are (though in a confused representa- 
tion). But as sensuous intuition is a peculiar [p. 268] 
subjective condition on which all perception a priori de- 
pends, and the form of which is original and independent, 
the form must be given by itself, and so far from matter 
(or the things themselves which appear) forming the true 
foundation (as we might think, if we judged according to 
mere concepts), the very possibility of matter presupposes 
a formal intuition (space and time) as given. 



Traiiscendental Analytic 219 

NOTE ON THE AMPHIBOLY OF REFLECTIVE 
CONCEPTS 

I beg to be allowed to call the place which we assign to 
a concept, either in sensibility or in the pure understand- 
ing, its transcendental place. If so, then the determination 
of this position which belongs to every concept, according 
to the difference of its use, and the directions for deter- 
mining according to rules that place for all concepts, would 
be called traiiscendental topic ; a doctrine which would 
thoroughly protect us against the subreptitious claims of 
the pure understanding and the errors arising from it, by 
always distinguishing to what faculty of knowledge each 
concept truly belongs. Every concept, or every title to 
which many kinds of knowledge belong, may be called a 
logical place. Upon this is based the logical topic of Aris- 
totle, of which orators and schoolmasters avail themselves 
in order to find under certain titles of thought [p. 269] 
what would best suit the matter they have in hand, and 
thus to be able, with a certain appearance of thoroughness, 
to argue and wrangle to any extent. 

Transcendental topic, on the contrary, contains no more 
than the above-mentioned four titles of all comparison and 
distinction, which differ from the categories because they 
do not serve to represent the object according to what con- 
stitutes its . concept (quantity, reality, etc.), but only the 
comparison of representations, in all its variety, which pre- 
cedes the concept of things. This comparison, however, 
requires first a reflection, that is, a determination of the 
place to which the representations of things which are to be 
compared belong, namely, whether they are thought by the 
pure understanding or given as phenomena by sensibility. 



220 Transcendental Analytic 

Concepts may be logically compared without our asking 
any questions as to what place their objects belong, 
whether as noumena to the understanding, or to sensi- 
bility as phenomena. But if with these concepts we wish 
to proceed to the objects themselves, a transcendental 
reflection is necessary first of all, in order to determine 
whether they are meant to be objects for the pure under- 
standing or for sensibility. Without this reflection our use 
of these concepts would be very uncertain, and [p. 270] 
synthetical propositions would spring up which critical 
reason cannot acknowledge, and which arc simply founded 
on transcendental amphiboly, that is, on our confounding 
an object of the pure understanding with a phenomenon. 

For want of such a transcendental topic, and deceived 
by the amphiboly of reflective concepts, the celebrated 
Leibniz erected an intellectual system of the zvorld, or 
believed at least that he knew the internal nature of things 
by comparing all objects with the understanding only and 
with the abstract formal concepts of his thought. Our 
table of reflective concepts gives us the unexpected ad- 
vantage of being able to exhibit clearly the distinctive 
features of his system in all its parts, and at the same time 
the leading principle of this peculiar view which rested on 
a simple misunderstanding. He compared all things with 
each other by means of concepts only, and naturally found 
no other differences but those by which the understanding 
distinguishes its pure concepts from each other. The 
conditions of sensuous intuition, which carry their own 
differences, are not considered by him as original and 
independent; for sensibility was with him a confused 
mode of representation only, and not a separate source of 
representations. According to him a phenomenon was 



Transcendental Analytic 22 1 

the representation of a thing by itself, though different, in 
its logical form, from knowledge by means of the [p. 271] 
understanding, because the phenomenon, in the ordinary 
absence of analysis, brings a certain admixture of collat- 
eral representations into the concept of a thing which the 
understanding is able to separate. In one word, Leibniz 
inte lie dualised phenomena, just as Locke, according to 
his system of Noogony (if I may use such an expression), 
sensualised all concepts of the understanding, that is, 
represented them as nothing but empirical, though ab- 
stract, reflective concepts. Instead of regarding the 
understanding and sensibility as two totally distinct sources 
of representations, which however can supply objectively 
valid judgments of things only in conjunction with each 
other, each of these great men recognised but one of them, 
which in their opinion applied immediately to things by 
themselves, while the other did nothing but to produce 
either disorder or order in the representations of the 
former. 

Leibniz accordingly compared the objects of the senses 
with each other as things in general and in the under- 
standing only. He did this, 

First, so far as they are judged by the understanding 
to be either identical or different. As he considers their 
concepts only and not their place in intuition, in which 
alone objects can be given, and takes no account of the 
transcendental place of these concepts (whether the object 
is to be counted among phenomena or among things by 
themselves), it could not happen otherwise than [p. 272] 
that he should extend his principle of indiscernibility, 
which is valid with regard to concepts of things in gen- 
eral only, to objects of the senses also (mitndzts phacnom- 



222 Transcendental Analytic 

enon)> and imagine that he thus added no inconsiderable 
extension to our knowledge of nature. No doubt, if I 
know a drop of water as a thing by itself in all its internal 
determinations, I cannot allow that one is different from 
the other, when their whole concepts are identical. But 
if the drop of water is a phenomenon in space, it has its 
place not only in the understanding (among concepts), 
but in the sensuous external intuition (in space), and in 
this case the physical place is quite indifferent with regard 
to the inner determinations of things, so that a place B 
can receive a thing which is perfectly similar or identical 
with another in place A, quite as well as if it were totally 
different from it in its internal determinations. Difference 
of place by itself and without any further conditions ren- 
ders the plurality and distinction of objects as phenomena 
not only possible, but also necessary. That so-called law 
of Leibniz therefore is no law of nature, but only an 
analytical rule, or a comparison of things by means of 
concepts only. 

Secondly. The principle that realities (as mere asser- 
tions) never logically contradict each other, is perfectly 
true with regard to the relation of concepts, but [p. 273] 
has no meaning whatever either as regards nature or as 
regards anything by itself (of which we can have no con- 
cept whatever). 1 The real opposition, as when A — B = o, 
takes place everywhere wherever one reality is united 
with another in the same subject and one annihilates the 
effect of the other. This is constantly brought before our 
eyes in nature by all impediments and reactions which, as 
depending on forces, must be called realitates phaenomena. 

1 ' Whatever ' is omitted in the Second Edition. 



i 



Transcendental Ana lytic 223 

General mechanics can even give us the empirical condi- 
tion of that opposition in an a priori rule, by attending to 
the opposition of directions ; a condition of which the tran- 
scendental concept of reality knows nothing. Although 
Leibniz himself did not announce this proposition with 
all the pomp of a new principle, he yet made use of it 
for new assertions, and his followers expressly inserted 
it in their system of the Leibniz-Wolfian philosophy. 
According to this principle all evils, for example, are 
nothing but the consequences of the limitations of created 
beings, that is, they are negations, because these can be 
the only opposites of reality (which is perfectly true in 
the mere concept of the thing in general, but not in things 
as phenomena). In like manner the followers of Leibniz 
consider it not only possible, but even natural, to unite 
all reality, without fearing any opposition, in one being ; 
because the only opposition they know is that [p. 274] 
of contradiction (by which the concept of a thing itself is 
annihilated), while they ignore that of reciprocal action 
and reaction, when one real cause destroys the effect of 
another, a process which we can only represent to our- 
selves when the conditions are given in sensibility. 

Thirdly. The Leibnizian monadology has really no other 
foundation than that Leibniz represented the difference of 
the internal and the external in relation to the understand- 
ing only. Substances must have something internal, which 
is free from all external relations, and therefore from com- 
position also. The simple, therefore, or uncompounded, 
is the foundation of the internal of things by themselves. 
This internal in the state of substances cannot consist in 
space, form, contact, or motion (all these determinations 
being external relations), and we cannot therefore ascribe 



224 Transcendental Analytic 

to substances any other internal state but that which 
belongs to our own internal sense, namely, the state of 
representations. This is the history of the monads, which 
were to form the elements of the whole universe, and the 
energy of which consists in representations only, so that 
properly they can be active within themselves only. 

For this reason, his principle of a possible community 
of substances could only be a pre-established harmony, 
and not a physical influence. For, as every- [p. 275] 
thing is actively occupied internally only, that is, with its 
own representations, the state of representations in one 
substance could not be in active connection with that of 
another; but it became necessary to admit a third cause, 
exercising its influence on all substances, and making their 
states to correspond with each other, not indeed by oc- 
casional assistance rendered in each particular case (sys- 
tema assistentiae), but through the unity of the idea of a 
cause valid for all, and in which all together must receive 
their existence and permanence, and therefore also their 
reciprocal correspondence according to universal laws. 

Fourthly. Leibniz's celebrated doctrine of space and 
time, in which he intellectualised these forms of sensi- 
bility, arose entirely from the same delusion of transcen- 
dental reflection. If by means of the pure understanding 
alone I want to represent the external relations of things, 
I can do this only by means of the concept of their 
reciprocal action ; and if I want to connect one state with 
another state of the same thing, this is possible only in 
the order of cause and effect. Thus it happened that 
Leibniz conceived space as a certain order in the com- 
munity of substances, and time as the dynamical sequence 
of their states. That which space and time seem to pos^ 



Transcende7ital Analytic 225 

sess as proper to themselves and independent [p. 276] 
of things, he ascribed to the confusion of these concepts, 
which made us mistake what is a mere form of dynamical 
relations for a peculiar and independent intuition, ante- 
cedent to things themselves. Thus space and time became 
with him the intelligible form of the connection of things 
(substances and their states) by themselves, and things 
were intelligible substances {snbstantiae noumena). Never- 
theless he tried to make these concepts valid for phe- 
nomena, because he would not concede to sensibility any 
independent kind of intuition, but ascribed all, even the 
empirical representation of objects, to the understanding, 
leaving to the senses nothing but the contemptible work 
of confusing and mutilating the representations of the 
understanding. 

But, even if we could predicate anything synthetically 
by means of the pure understanding of things by them- 
selves (which however is simply impossible), this could 
never be referred to phenomena, because these do not 
represent things by themselves. We should. therefore in 
such a case have to compare our concepts in a transcen- 
dental reflection under the conditions of sensibility only, 
and thus space and time would never be determinations of 
things by themselves, but of phenomena. What things 
may be by themselves we know not, nor need [p. 277] 
we care to know, because, after all, a thing can never 
come before me otherwise than as a phenomenon. 

The remaining reflective conceptions have to be treated 
in the same manner. Matter is substantia phenomenon. 
What may belong to it internally, I seek for in all parts of 
space occupied by it, and in all effects produced by it, all 
of which, however, can be phenomena of the external 

Q 



226 Transcendental Analytic 

senses only. I have therefore nothing that is absolutely, 
but only what is relatively internal, and this consists itself 
of external relations. Nay, what according to the pure 
understanding should be the absolutely internal of matter 
is a mere phantom, for matter is never an object of 
the pure understanding, while the transcendental object 
which may be the ground of the phenomenon which we 
call matter, is a mere something of which we could not 
even understand what it is, though somebody should tell 
us. We cannot understand anything except what carries 
with it in intuition something corresponding to our words. 
If the complaint ' that we do not understand the internal 
of things,' means that we do not comprehend by means of 
the pure understanding what the things which appear to 
us may be of themselves, it seems totally unjust and 
unreasonable ; for it means that without senses we should 
be able to know and therefore to see things, that is, that 
we should possess a faculty of knowledge totally different 
from the human, not only in degree, but in kind [p. 278] 
and in intuition, in fact, that we should not be men, but 
beings of whom we ourselves could not say whether they 
are even possible, much less what they would be like. 
Observation and analysis of phenomena enter into the 
internal of nature, and no one can say how far this may 
go in time. Those transcendental questions, however, 
which go beyond nature, would nevertheless remain un- 
answerable, even if the whole of nature were revealed to 
us, for it is not given to us to observe even our own mind 
with any intuition but that of our internal sense. In it lies 
the mystery of the origin of our sensibility. Its relation 
to an object, and the transcendental ground of that unity, 
are no doubt far too deeply hidden for us, who can know 



Transcendental Analytic 227 

even ourselves by means of the internal sense only, that is, 
as phenomena, and we shall never be able to use the same 
imperfect instrument of investigation in order to find any- 
thing but again and again phenomena, the non-sensuous, 
and non-phenomenal cause of which we are seeking in vain. 

What renders this criticism of the conclusions by means 
of the acts of mere reflection extremely useful is, that it 
shows clearly the nullity of all conclusions with regard to 
objects compared with each other in the understanding 
only, and that it confirms at the same time what [p. 279] 
we have so strongly insisted on, namely, that phenomena, 
though they cannot be comprehended as things by them- 
selves among the objects of the pure understanding, are 
nevertheless the only objects in which our knowledge can 
possess objective reality, i.e. where intuition corresponds 
to concepts. 

When we reflect logically only, we only compare in our 
understanding concepts among themselves, trying to find 
out whether both have exactly the same contents, whether 
they contradict themselves or not, whether something 
belongs to a concept, or is added to it, and which of the 
two may be given, while the other may be a mode only of 
thinking the given concept. But if I refer these concepts 
to an object in general (in a transcendental sense), with- 
out determining whether it be an object of sensuous or 
intellectual intuition, certain limitations appear at once, 
warning us not to go beyond the concept, and upsetting 
all empirical use of it, thus proving that a representation 
of an object, as of a thing in general, is not only insuffi- 
cient, but, if without sensuous determination, and indepen- 
dent of empirical conditions, self-contradictory. It is 
necessary therefore either to take no account at all of the 



228 Transcendental Analytic 

object (as we do in logic) or, if not, then to think it under 
the conditions of sensuous intuition, because the intelligi- 
ble would require a quite peculiar intuition which we do 
not possess, and, without it, would be nothing to us, while 
on the other side phenomena also could never [p. 280] 
be things by themselves. For if I represent to myself 
things in general only, the difference of external relations 
cannot, it is true, constitute a difference of the things 
themselves, but rather presupposes it ; and, if the concept 
of one thing does not differ at all internally from that of 
another, I only have one and the same thing placed in 
different relations. Furthermore, by adding a mere affir- 
mation (reality) to another, the positive in it is indeed 
augmented, and nothing is taken away or removed, so 
that we see that the real in things can never be in contra- 
diction with itself, etc. 

******** 

A certain misunderstanding of these reflective concepts 
has, as we showed, exercised so great an influence on the 
use of the understanding, as to mislead even one of the 
most acute philosophers to the adoption of a so-called 
system of intellectual knowledge, which undertakes to 
determine objects without the intervention of the senses. 
For this reason the exposition of the cause of the misunder- 
standing, which lies in the amphiboly of these concepts, 
as the origin of false principles, is of great utility in deter- 
mining and securing the true limits of the understanding. 

It is no doubt true, that what can be affirmed or denied 
of a concept in general, can also be affirmed or denied of 
any part of it {dictum de omni et nulld) ; but it [p. 281] 
would be wrong so to change this logical proposition as to 
make it say that whatever is not contained in a general 



Tra7iscendental Analytic 229 

concept, is not contained either in the particular con- 
cepts comprehended under it ; for these are particular 
concepts for the very reason that they contain more than 
is conceived in the general concept. Nevertheless the 
whole intellectual system of Leibniz is built up on this 
fallacy, and with it falls necessarily to the ground, to- 
gether with all equivocation in the use of the understand- 
ing, that had its origin in it. 

Leibniz's principle of discernibility is really based on 
the supposition that, if a certain distinction is not to be 
found in the general concept of a thing, it could not be 
met with either in the things themselves, and that there- 
fore all things were perfectly the same (nnmero eadem), 
which are not distinguished from each other in their con- 
cept also, as to quality or quantity. And because in the 
mere concept of a thing, no account has been taken of 
many a necessary condition of its intuition, it has rashly 
been concluded that that which, in forming an abstraction, 
has been intentionally left out of account, did really not 
exist anywhere, and nothing has been allowed to a thing 
except what is contained in its concept. [p. 282] 

The concept of a cubic foot of space, wherever and how 
many times soever I may think it, is in itself perfectly the 
same. But two cubic feet are nevertheless distinguished 
in space, by their places alone (nnmero diversa), and these 
places are conditions of the intuition in which the object 
of our concept is given, and which, though they do not 
belong to the concept, belong nevertheless to the whole 
of sensibility. In a similar manner there is no contra- 
diction in the concept of a thing, unless something nega- 
tive has been connected with something affirmative ; and 
simply affirmative concepts, if joined together, cannot 



230 Transcendental Analytic 

neutralise each other. But in sensuous intuition, where 
we have to deal with reality (for instance motion), there 
exist conditions (opposite directions) of which in the 
concept of motion in general no account was taken, and 
which render possible an opposition (not however a logical 
one), and from mere positives produce zero = o, so that 
it would be wrong to say that all reality must be in per- 
fect agreement, if there is no opposition between its con- 
cepts. 1 If we keep to concepts only, that which we call 
internal is the substratum of all relations or [p. 283] 
external determinations. If therefore I take no account 
of any of the conditions of intuition, and confine myself 
solely to the concept of a thing, then I may drop no doubt 
all external relations, and yet there must remain the con- 
cept of something which implies no relation, but internal 
determinations only. From this it might seem to follow 
that there exists in everything something (substance) which 
is absolutely internal, preceding all external determinations, 
nay, rendering them possible. It might likewise seem to 
follow that this substratum, as no longer containing any 
external relations, must be simple (for corporeal things are 
always relations only, at. least of their parts existing side 
by side) ; and as we know of no entirely internal deter- 
minations beyond those of our own internal sense, that 
substratum might be taken, not only as simple, but like- 

1 If one wished to use here the usual subterfuge that realitates noumena, 
at least, cannot oppose each other, it would be necessary to produce an 
example of such pure and non-sensuous reality, to enable us to see whether 
it was something or nothing. No example, however, can be produced, except 
from experience, which never offers us anything but phenomena; so that this 
proposition means really nothing but that a concept, which contains affirma- 
tives only, contains no negative, a proposition which we at least have never 
doubted. 



Transcendental Analytic 231 

wise (according to the analogy of our own internal sense) 
as determined by representations, so that all things would 
be really monads, or simple beings endowed with repre- 
sentations. All this would be perfectly true, unless some- 
thing more than the concept of a thing in gen- [p. 284] 
eral were required in order to give us objects of external 
intuition, although the pure concept need take no account 
of it. But we see, on the contrary, that a permanent 
phenomenon in space (impenetrable extension) may con- 
tain mere relations without anything that is absolutely 
internal, and yet be the first substratum of all external 
perception. It is true that if we think by concepts only, 
we cannot think something external without something 
internal, because conceptions of relations presuppose 
things given, and are impossible without them. But as 
in intuition something is contained which does not exist 
at all in the mere concept of a thing, and as it is this 
which supplies the substratum that could never be known 
by mere concepts, namely, a space which, with all that 
is contained in it, consists of purely formal, or real rela- 
tions also, I am not allowed to say, that, because nothing 
can be represented by mere concepts without something 
absolutely internal, there could not be in the real things 
themselves, comprehended under those concepts, and in 
their intuition, anything external, without a foundation of 
something absolutely internal. For, if we take no account 
of all conditions of intuition, then no doubt nothing re- 
mains in the mere concept but the internal in general, 
with its mutual relations, through which alone the exter- 
nal is possible. This necessity, however, which depends 
on abstraction alone, does not apply to things, if [p. 285] 
they are given in intuition with determinations expressive 



232 Transcendental Analytic 

of mere relations, and without having for their foundation 
anything internal, for the simple reason that they are 
phenomena only, and not things in themselves. What- 
ever we may know of matter are nothing but relations 
(what we call internal determinations are but relatively 
internal) ; but there are among these relations some which 
are independent and permanent, and by which a certain 
object is given us. That I, when abstraction is made of 
these relations, have nothing more to think, does not do 
away with the concept of a thing, as a phenomenon, nor 
with the concept of an object in abstracto. It only shows 
the impossibility of such an object as could be determined 
by mere concepts, that is of a noumenon. It is no doubt 
startling to hear, that a thing should consist entirely of 
relations, but such a thing as we speak of is merely a 
phenomenon, and can never be thought by means of the 
categories only ; nay, it consists itself of the mere relation 
of something in general to our senses. In the same man- 
ner, it is impossible for us to represent the relations of 
things in abstracto as long as we deal with concepts only, 
in any other way than that one should be the cause of 
determinations in the other, this being the very concept 
of our understanding, with regard to relations. But as 
in this case we make abstraction of all intuition, a whole 
class of determinations, by which the manifold determines 
its place to each of its component parts, that is, the form 
of sensibility (space), disappears, though in truth [p. 286] 
it precedes all empirical casuality. 

If by purely intelligible objects we understand things 
which, without all schemata of sensibility, are thought by 
mere categories, such objects are simply impossible. It is 
our sensuous intuition by which objects are given to us that 



Transcendental Analytic 233 

forms the condition of the objective application of all the 
concepts of our understanding, and without that intuition 
the categories have no relation whatever to any object. 
Nay, even if we admitted a kind of intuition different from 
the sensuous, our functions of thought would have no 
meaning with regard to it. If we only mean objects of a 
non-sensuous intuition, to which our categories do not apply, 
and of which we can have no knowledge whatever (either 
intuitional or conceptual), there is no reason why noumena, 
in this merely negative meaning, should not be admitted, 
because in this case we mean no more than this, that our 
intuition does not embrace all things, but objects of our 
senses only; that, consequently, its objective validity is 
limited, and space left for some other kind of intuition, and 
consequently for things as objects of it. But in that sense 
the concept of a noumenon is problematical, that is, the 
representation of a thing of which we can neither say that 
it is possible or that it is impossible, because we have no 
conception of any kind of intuition but that of our senses, 
or of any kind of concepts but of our categories, [p. 287] 
neither of them being applicable to any extra-sensuous 
object. We cannot therefore extend in a positive sense 
the field of the objects of our thought beyond the conditions 
of our sensibility, or admit, besides phenomena, objects of 
pure thought, that is, noumena, simply because they do not 
possess any positive meaning that could be pointed out. 
For it must be admitted that the categories by themselves 
are not sufficient for a knowledge of things, and that, with- 
out the data of sensibility, they would be nothing but 
subjective forms of unity of the understanding, and without 
an object. We do not say that thought is a mere product 
of the senses, and therefore limited by them, but it does 



234 Transcendental Analytic 

not follow that therefore thought, without sensibility, has 
its own pure use, because it would really be without an 
object. Nor would it be right to call the noumenon such 
an object of the pure understanding, for the noumenon 
means the problematical concept of an object, intended for 
an intuition and understanding totally different from our 
own, and therefore themselves mere problems. The con- 
cept of the noumenon is not therefore the concept of an 
object, but only a problem, inseparable from the limitation 
of our sensibility, whether there may not be objects inde- 
pendent of its intuition. This is a question that [p. 288] 
can only be answered in an uncertain way, by saying that 
as sensuous intuition does not embrace all things without 
exception, there remains a place for other objects, that can- 
not therefore be absolutely denied, but cannot be asserted 
either as objects of our understanding, because there is no 
definite concept for them (our categories being unfit for 
that purpose). 

The understanding therefore limits the sensibility with- 
out enlarging thereby its own field, and by warning the 
latter that it can never apply to things by themselves, 
but to phenomena only, it forms the thought of an object 
by itself, but as transcendental only, which is the cause of 
phenomena, and therefore never itself a phenomenon : 
which cannot be thought as quantity, nor as reality, nor as 
substance (because these concepts require sensuous forms 
in which to determine an object), and of which therefore 
it must always remain unknown, whether it is to be found 
within us only, or also without us ; and whether, if sensi- 
bility were removed, it would vanish or remain. If we like 
to call this object noumenon, because the representation of 
it is not sensuous, we are at liberty to do so. But as we 



Transcendental Analytic 235 

cannot apply to it any of the concepts of our understand- 
ing, such a representation remains to us empty, serving no 
purpose but that of indicating the limits of our sensuous 
knowledge, and leaving at the same time an [p. 289] 
empty space which we cannot fill either by possible expe- 
rience, or by the pure understanding. 

The critique of the pure understanding does not there- 
fore allow us to create a new sphere of objects beyond 
those which can come before it as phenomena, or to stray 
into intelligible worlds, or even into the concept of such. 
The mistake which leads to this in the most plausible 
manner, and which, though excusable, can never be justi- 
fied, consists in making the use of the understanding, con- 
trary to its very intention, transcendental, so that objects, 
that is, possible intuitions, are made to conform to con- 
cepts, not concepts to possible intuitions, on which alone 
their objective validity can rest. The cause of this is 
again, that apperception, and with it thought, precedes 
every possible determinate arrangement of represen- 
tations. We are thinking something in general, and 
determine it on one side sensuously, but distinguish at 
the same time the general object, represented in abstrac- 
tion, from this particular mode of sensuous intuition. 
Thus there remains to us a mode of determining the 
object by thought only, which, though it is a mere logical 
form without any contents, seems to us nevertheless a 
mode in which the object by itself exists (noumenon), with- 
out regard to the intuition which is restricted to our 
senses. [p. 290] 

Before leaving this transcendental Analytic, we have to 
add something which, though in itself of no particular 



236 Transcendental Analytic 

importance, may yet seem to be requisite for the complete- 
ness of the system. The highest concept of which all 
transcendental philosophy generally begins, is the division 
into the possible and the impossible. But, as all division 
presupposes a divisible concept, a higher concept is re- 
quired, and this is the concept of an object in general, 
taken as problematical, it being left uncertain whether it 
be something or nothing. As the categories are the only 
concepts which apply to objects in general, the distinction 
whether an object is something or nothing must proceed 
according to the order and direction of the categories. 

I. Opposed to the concepts of all, many, and one, is 
the concept which annihilates everything, that is, none ; 
and thus the object of a concept, to which no intuition 
can be found to correspond, is = o, that is, a concept with- 
out an object, like the noumena, which cannot be counted 
as possibilities, though not as impossibilities either (ens 
nationis) ; or like certain fundamental forces, [p. 291] 
which have been newly invented, and have been con- 
ceived without contradiction, but at the same time with- 
out any example from experience, and must not therefore 
be counted among possibilities. 

II. Reality is something, negation is nothing ; that is, 
it is the concept of the absence of an object, as shadow or 
cold (nihil privativum). 

III. The mere form of intuition (without substance) 
is in itself no object, but the merely formal condition of 
it (as a phenomenon), as pure space and pure time (ens 
imaginarium), which, though they are something, as forms 
of intuition, are not themselves objects of intuition. 

IV. The object of a concept which contradicts itself, 
is nothing, because the concept is nothing; it is simply 



Transcendental Analytic 237 

the impossible, as a figure composed of two straight lines 
{nihil negativnm). 

A table showing this division of the concept of nothing 
(the corresponding division of the concept of something- 
follows by itself) would have to be arranged as follows. 

Nothing, [p. 292] 

as 

I. Empty concept without an object. 

Ens rat'onis. 

II. Empty object of a III. Empty intuition without 

concept. an object. 

Nil privativum. Ens imaginarium 

IV. Empty object without a concept. 

Nihil negativam. 

We see that the ens rationis (No. 1) differs from the 
ens negativnm (No. 4), because the former cannot be 
counted among the possibilities, being the result of 
fancy, though not self-contradictory, while the latter is 
opposed to possibility, the concept annihilating itself. 
Both, however, are empty concepts. The nihil privati- 
vum (No. 2) and the ens imaginarium (No. 3) are, on 
the contrary, empty data for concepts. It would be 
impossible to represent to ourselves darkness, unless light 
had been given to the senses, or space, unless extended 
beings had been perceived. The negation, as well as 
the pure form of intuition are, without something real, 
no objects. 



TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC [ P . 293] 

Second Division 

Transcendental Dialectic 

INTRODUCTION 

1. Of Transcendental Appearance (Illusion) 

We call Dialectic in general a logic of illusion (eine 
Logik des Scheins). This does not mean that it is a 
doctrine of probability (Wahrscheinlichkeit), for proba- 
bility is a kind of truth, known through insufficient 
causes, the knowledge of which is therefore deficient, 
but not deceitful, and cannot properly be separated from 
the analytical part of logic. Still less can phenomenon 
(Erscheinung) and illusion (Schein) be taken as identical. 
For truth or illusion is not to be found in the objects of 
intuition, but in the judgments upon them, so far as they 
are thought. It is therefore quite right to say, that the 
senses never err, not because they always judge rightly, 
but because they do not judge at all. Truth therefore 
and error, and consequently illusory appearance also, as 
the cause of error, exist in our judgments only, that is, 
in the relation of an object to our understanding. No 
error exists in our knowledge, if it completely agrees with 
the laws of our understanding, nor can there be [p. 294] 
an error in a representation of the senses/because they 

238 



Transcendental Dialectic 239 

involve no judgment, and no power of nature can, of its 
own accord, deviate from its own laws. Therefore neither 
the understanding by itself (without the influence of 
another cause), nor the senses by themselves could ever 
err. The understanding could not err, because as long 
as it acts according to its own laws, the effect (the judg- 
ment) must necessarily agree with those laws, and the 
formal test of all truth consists in this agreement with 
the laws of the understanding. The senses cannot err, 
because there is in them no judgment at all, whether 
true or false. Now as we have no other sources of know- 
ledge but these two, it follows that error can only arise 
through the unperceived influence of the sensibility on 
the understanding, whereby it happens that subjective 
grounds of judgment are mixed up with the objective, 
and cause them to deviate from their destination; 1 just 
as a body in motion would, if left to itself, always follow 
a straight line in the same direction, which is changed 
however into a curvilinear motion, as soon as another 
force influences it at the same time in a different direc- 
tion. In order to distinguish the proper action [p. 295] 
of the understanding from that other force which is mixed 
up with it, it will be necessary to look on an erroneous 
judgment as the diagonal between two forces, which de- 
termine the judgment in two different directions, forming 
as it were an angle, and to dissolve that composite effect 
into the simple ones of the understanding and of the sen- 
sibility, which must be effected in pure judgments a priori 

1 Sensibility, if subjected to the understanding as the object on which it 
exercises its function, is the source of real knowledge, but sensibility, if it in- 
fluences the action of the understanding itself and leads it on to a judgment, 
is the cause of error. 



240 Transcendental Dialectic 

by transcendental reflection, whereby, as we tried to show, 
the right place is assigned to each representation in the 
faculty of knowledge corresponding to it, and the influence 
of either faculty upon such representation is determined. 

It is not at present our business to treat of empirical, 
for instance, optical appearance or illusion, which occurs 
in the empirical use of the otherwise correct rules of the 
understanding, and by which, owing to the influence of 
imagination, the faculty of judgment is misled. We 
have to deal here with nothing but the transcendental 
illusion, which touches principles never even intended 
to be applied to experience, which might give us a test 
of their correctness, — an illusion which, in spite of all 
the warnings of criticism, tempts us far beyond the em- 
pirical use of the categories, and deludes us with the mere 
dream of an extension of the pure understanding. All 
principles the application of which is entirely confined 
within the limits of possible experience, we [p. 296] 
shall call immanent ; those, on the contrary, which tend 
to transgress those limits, transcendent. I do not mean 
by this the transcendental use or abuse of the categories, 
which is a mere fault of the faculty of the judgment, 
not being as yet sufficiently subdued by criticism nor 
sufficiently attentive to the limits of the sphere within 
which alone the pure understanding has full play, but 
real principles which call upon us to break down all 
those barriers, and to claim a perfectly new territory, 
which nowhere recognises any demarcation at all. Here 
transcendental and transcendent do not mean the same 
thing. The principles of the pure understanding, which 
we explained before, are meant to be only of empirical, 
and not of transcendental application, that is, they cannot 



Transcendental Dialectic 241 

transcend the limits of experience. A principle, on the 
contrary, which removes these landmarks, nay, insists 
on our transcending them, is called transcendent. If our 
critique succeeds in laying bare the illusion of those pre- 
tended principles, the other principles of a purely em- 
pirical use may, in opposition to the former, be called 
immanent. 

Logical illusion, which consists in a mere imitation 
of the forms of reason (the illusion of sophistic syllo- 
gisms), arises entirely from want of attention to logical 
rules. It disappears at once, when our attention [p. 297] 
is roused. Transcendental illusion, on the contrary, does 
not disappear, although it has been shown up, and its 
worthlessness rendered clear by means of transcendental 
criticism, as, for instance, the illusion inherent in the 
proposition that the world must have a beginning in 
time. The cause of this is that there exists in our 
reason (considered subjectively as a faculty of human 
knowledge) principles and maxims of its use, which have 
the appearance of objective principles, and lead us to 
mistake the subjective necessity of a certain connection 
of our concepts in favour of the understanding for an 
objective necessity in the determination of things by 
themselves. This illusion is as impossible to avoid as 
it is to prevent the sea from appearing to us higher at 
a distance than on the shore, because we see it by 
higher rays of light ; or to prevent the moon from ap- 
pearing, even to an astronomer, larger at its rising, 
although he is not deceived by that illusion. 

Transcendental Dialectic must, therefore, be content 
to lay bare the illusion of transcendental judgments and 
guarding against its deceptions — but it will never sue- 



j 



242 Transcendental Dialectic 

ceed in removing the transcendental illusion (like the 
logical), and putting an end to it altogether, [p. 298] 
For we have here to deal with a natural and inevitable 
illusion, which itself rests on subjective principles, repre- 
senting them to us as objective, while logical Dialectic, 
in removing sophisms, has to deal merely with a mis- 
take in applying the principles, or with an artificial illu- 
sion produced by an imitation of them. There exists, 
therefore, a natural and inevitable Dialectic of pure rea- 
son, not one in which a mere bungler might get entangled 
from want of knowledge, or which a sophist might arti- 
ficially devise to confuse rational people, but one that 
is inherent in, and inseparable from human reason, and 
which, even after its illusion has been exposed, will never 
cease to fascinate our reason, and to precipitate it into 
momentary errors, such as require to be removed again 
and again. 

2. Of Pure Reason, as the Seat of Transcendental Illusion 

A. Of Reason in General 

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds 
thence to the understanding, and ends with reason. 
There is nothing higher than reason, for working up 
the material of intuition, and comprehending it under the 
highest unity of thought. As it here becomes [p. 299] 
necessary to give a definition of that highest faculty of 
knowledge, I begin to feel considerable misgivings. There 
is of reason, as there is of the understanding, a purely 
formal, that is logical use, in which no account is taken 
of the contents of knowledge ; but there is also a real 
use, in so far as reason itself contains the origin of cer- 



Transce?idental Dialectic 243, 

tain concepts and principles, which it has not borrowed 
either from the senses or from the understanding. The 
former faculty has been long defined by logicians as the 
faculty of mediate conclusions, in contradistinction to im- 
mediate ones {consequentiae immediatae) ; but this does 
not help us to understand the latter, which itself produces 
concepts. As this brings us face to face with the division 
of reason into a logical and a transcendental faculty, we 
must look for a higher concept for this source of know- 
ledge, to comprehend both concepts : though, according to 
the analogy of the concepts of the understanding, we may 
expect that the logical concept will give us the key to the 
transcendental, and that the table of the functions of the 
former will give us the genealogical outline of the con- 
cepts of reason. 

In the first part of our transcendental logic we defined 
the understanding as the faculty of rales, and we now 
distinguish reason from it, by calling it the facility of 
principles. [p. 300] 

The term principle is ambiguous, and signifies com- 
monly some kind of knowledge only that may be used as 
a principle, though in itself, and according to its origin, 
it is no principle at all. Every general proposition, even 
though it may have been derived from experience (by 
induction), may serve as a major in a syllogism of reason ; 
but it is not on that account a principle. Mathematical 
axioms, as, for instance, that between two points there can 
be only one straight line, constitute even general know- 
ledge a priori, and may therefore, with reference to the 
cases which can be brought under them, rightly be called 
principles. Nevertheless it would be wrong to say, that 
this property of a straight line, in general and by itself, 



244 Transcendental Dialectic 

is known to us from principles, for it is known from pure 
intuition only. 

/ I shall therefore call it knowledge from principles, 
whenever we know the particular in the general, by 
means of concepts. Thus every syllogism of reason is a 
form of deducing some kind of knowledge from a prin- 
ciple, because the major always contains a concept which 
enables us to know, according to a principle, everything 
that can be comprehended under the conditions of that 
concept. As every general knowledge may serve as a 
major in such a syllogism, and as the understanding 
supplies such general propositions a priori, these no 
doubt may, with reference to their possible use, be called 
principles. [p. 301] 

But, if we consider these principles of the pure under- 
standing in themselves, and according to their origin, we 
find that they are anything rather than knowledge from 
concepts. They would not even be possible a priori, 
unless we relied on pure intuition (in mathematics) or 
on conditions of a possible experience in general. That 
everything which happens has a cause, can by no means 
be concluded from the concept of that which happens ; 
on the contrary, that very principle shows in what man- 
ner alone we can form a definite empirical concept of 
that which happens. 

It is impossible therefore for the understanding to sup- 
ply us with synthetical knowledge from concepts, and it is 
really that kind of knowledge which I call principles abso- 
lutely ; while all general propositions may be called prin- 
ciples relatively. 

It is an old desideratum, which at some time, however 
distant, may be realised, that, instead of the endless 






Transcendental Dialectic 245 

variety of civil laws, their principles might be discovered, 
for thus alone the secret might be found of what is called 
simplifying legislation. Such laws, however, are only 
limitations of our freedom under conditions by which it 
always agrees with itself ; they refer to something which 
is entirely our own work, and of which we ourselves can be 
the cause, by means of these concepts. But that objects 
in themselves, as for instance material nature, should be 
subject to principles, and be determined accord- [p. 302] 
ing to mere concepts, is something, if not impossible, at 
all events extremely contradictory. But be that as it may 
(for on this point we have still all investigations before 
us), so much at least is clear, that knowledge from princi- 
ples (by itself) is something totally different from mere 
knowledge of the understanding, which, in the form of a 
principle, may no doubt precede other knowledge, but 
which by itself (in so far as it is synthetical) is not based 
on mere thought, nor contains anything general, according 
to concepts. 

If the understanding is a faculty for producing unity 
among phenomena, according to rules, reason is the faculty 
for producing unity among the rules of the understanding, 
according to principles. Reason therefore never looks 
directly to experience, or to any object, but to the under- 
standing, in order to impart a priori through concepts to 
its manifold kinds of knowledge a unity that may be called 
the unity of reason, and is very different from the unity 
which can be produced by the understanding. 

This is a general definition of the faculty of reason, so 
far as it was possible to make it intelligible without the 
help of illustrations, which are to be given hereafter. 



246 Transcendental Dialectic 

B. Of the Logical Use of Reason [p. 303] 

A distinction is commonly made between what is im- 
mediately known and what is only inferred. That in a 
figure bounded by three straight lines there are three 
angles, is known immediately, but that these angles to- 
gether are equal to two right angles, is only inferred. As 
we are constantly obliged to infer, we grow so accustomed 
to it, that in the end we no longer perceive this difference, 
and as in the case of the so-called deceptions of the senses, 
often mistake what we have only inferred for something 
perceived,,' mmediately. In every syllogism there is first a 
fundamental proposition ; secondly, another deduced from 
it ; and lastly, the conclusion (consequence), according to 
which the truth of the latter is indissolubly connected with 
the truth of the former. If the judgment or the conclusion 
is so clearly contained in the first that it can be inferred 
from it without the mediation or intervention of a third 
representation, the conclusion is called immediate (conse- 
quentia immediata) : though I should prefer to call it a 
conclusion of the understanding. But if, besides the fun- 
damental knowledge, another judgment is required to 
bring out the consequence, then the conclusion is called 
a conclusion of reason. In the proposition 'all men are 
mortal,' the following propositions are contained : some 
men are mortal ; or some mortals are men ; or nothing that 
is immortal is a man. These are therefore im- [p. 304] 
mediate inferences from the first. The proposition, on 
the contrary, all the learned are mortal, is not contained 
in the fundamental judgment, because the concept of 
learned does not occur in it, and can only be deduced from 
it by means of an intervening judgment. 



Transcendental Dialectic 247 

In every syllogism I first think a rule (the major) by 
means of the understanding. I then bring some special 
knowledge under the condition of the rule (the minor) by 
means of the faculty of judgment, and I finally determine 
my knowledge through the predicate of the rule (con- 
clusio), that is, a priori, by means of reason. It is there- 
fore the relation represented by the major proposition, as 
the rule, between knowledge and its condition, that con- 
stitutes the different kinds of syllogism. Syllogisms are 
therefore threefold, like all judgments, differing from each 
other in the manner in which they express the relation of 
knowledge in the understanding, namely, categorical, hy- 
pothetical, and disjunctive. 

If, as often happens, the conclusion is put forward as 
a judgment, in order to see whether it does not follow from 
other judgments by which a perfectly different object is 
conceived, I try to find in the understanding the assertion 
of that conclusion, in order to see whether it does -not ex- 
ist in it, under certain conditions, according to a general 
rule. If I find such a condition, and if the object of the 
conclusion can be brought under the given [p. 305] 
condition, then that conclusion follows from the rule 
which is valid for other objects of k?iow ledge also. Thus 
we see that reason, in forming conclusions, tries to reduce 
the great variety of the knowledge of the understanding 
to the smallest number of principles (general conditions), 
and thereby to produce in it the highest unity. 

C. Of the Pure Use of Reason 

The question to which we have at present to give an 
answer, though a preliminary one only, is this, whether 
reason can be isolated and thus constitute by itself an 



248 Transcendental Dialectic 

independent source of concepts and judgments, which 
spring from it alone, and through which it has reference 
to objects, or whether it is only a subordinate faculty for 
imparting a certain form to any given knowledge, namely, 
a logical form, a faculty whereby the cognitions of the 
understanding are arranged among themselves only, and 
lower rules placed under higher ones (the condition of the 
latter comprehending in its sphere the condition of the 
former) so far as all this can be done by their comparison. 
Variety of rules with unity of principles is a requirement 
of reason for the purpose of bringing the understanding 
into perfect agreement with itself, just as the understand- 
ing brings the variety of intuition under concepts, and 
thus imparts to intuition a connected form. Such a prin- 
ciple however prescribes no law to the objects [p. 306] 
themselves, nor does it contain the ground on which the 
possibility of knowing and determining objects depends. 
It is merely a subjective law of economy, applied to the 
stores of our understanding; having for its purpose, by 
means of a comparison of concepts, to reduce the general 
use of them to the smallest possible number, but without 
giving us a right to demand of the objects themselves 
such a uniformity as might conduce to the comfort and 
the extension of our understanding, or to ascribe to that 
maxim any objective validity. In one word, the question 
is, whether reason in itself, that is pure reason, contains 
synthetical principles and rules a priori, and what those 
principles are ? 

The merely formal and logical procedure of reason in 
syllogisms gives us sufficient hints as to the ground on 
which the transcendental principle of synthetical know- 
ledge, by means of pure reason, is likely to rest. 









Transcendental Dialectic 249 

First, a syllogism, as a function of reason, does not 
refer to intuitions in order to bring them under rules (as 
the understanding does with its categories), but to con- 
cepts and judgments. Although pure reason refers in the 
end to objects, it has no immediate relation to them and 
their intuition, but only to the understanding and its judg- 
ments, these having a direct relation to the [p. 307] 
senses and their intuition, and determining their objects. 
Unity of reason is therefore never the unity of a possible 
experience, but essentially different from it, as the unity 
of the understanding. That everything which happens 
has a cause, is not a principle discovered or prescribed by 
reason, it only makes the unity of experience possible, and 
borrows nothing from reason, which without this relation 
to possible experience could never, from mere concepts, 
have prescribed such a synthetical unity. 

Secondly. Reason, in its logical employment, looks for 
the general condition of its judgment (the conclusion), and 
the syllogism produced by reason is itself nothing but a 
judgment by means of bringing its condition under a gen- 
eral rule (the major). But as this rule is again liable to 
the same experiment, reason having to seek, as long as 
possible, the condition of a condition (by means of a pro- 
syllogism), it is easy to see that it is the peculiar principle 
of reason (in its logical use) to find for every condi- 
tioned knowledge of the understanding the unconditioned, 
whereby the unity of that knowledge may be completed. 

This logical maxim, however, cannot become a principle 
of pure reason, unless we admit that, whenever the condi- 
tion is given, the whole series of conditions, subordinated 
to one another, a series, which consequently is [p. 308] 
itself unconditioned, is likewise given (that is, is contained 
in the object and its connection). 



2^0 Transcendental Dialectic 

Such a principle of pure reason, however, is evidently 
synthetical; for analytically the conditioned refers no 
doubt to some condition, but not to the unconditioned. 
From this principle several other synthetical propositions 
also must arise of which the pure understanding knows 
nothing; because it has to deal with objects of a possible 
experience only, the knowledge and synthesis of which are 
always conditioned. The unconditioned, if it is really to 
be admitted, has to be especially considered with regard to 
all the determinations which distinguish it from whatever 
is conditioned, and will thus supply material for many a 
synthetical proposition a priori. 

The principles resulting from this highest principle of 
pure reason will however be transcendent, with regard to all 
phenomena ; that is to say, it will be impossible ever to 
make any adequate empirical use of such a principle. It 
will thus be completely different from all principles of the 
understanding, the use of which is entirely immanent and 
directed to the possibility of experience only. The task 
that is now before us in the transcendental Dialectic 
which has to be developed from sources deeply hidden in 
the human reason, is this : to discover the correctness or 
otherwise the falsehood of the principle that the series of 
conditions (in the synthesis of phenomena, or of objective 
thought in general) extends to the unconditioned, and 
what consequences result therefrom with regard to the 
empirical use of the understanding: — to rind [p. 309] 
out whether there is really such an objectively valid prin- 
ciple of reason, and not only, in place of it, a logical rule 
which requires us, by ascending to ever higher conditions, 
to approach their completeness, and thus to bring the 
highest unity of reason, which is possible to us, into our 



Transcendental Dialectic 251 

knowledge : to find out, I say, whether, by some miscon- 
ception, a mere tendency of reason has not been mistaken 
for a transcendental principle of pure reason, postulating, 
without sufficient reflection, absolute completeness in the 
series of conditions in the objects themselves, and what 
kind of misconceptions and illusions may in that case have 
crept into the syllogisms of reason, the major proposition 
of which has been taken over from pure reason (being 
perhaps a petitio rather than a postulatum), and which 
ascend from experience to its conditions. We shall divide 
it into two parts, of which the first will treat of the tran- 
scendent concepts of pure reason, the second of transcendent 
and dialectical syllogisms. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 

[p. 310] 

BOOK I 

OF THE CONCEPTS OF PURE REASON 

Whatever may be thought of the possibility of con- 
cepts of pure reason, it is certain that they are not simply 
obtained by reflection, but by inference. Concepts of the 
understanding exist a priori, before experience, and for the 
sake of it, but they contain nothing but the unity of reflec- 
tion applied to phenomena, so far as they are necessarily 
intended for a possible empirical consciousness. It is 
through them alone that knowledge and determination of 
an object become possible. They are the first to give 
material for conclusions, and they are not preceded by any 
concepts a priori of objects from which they could them- 
selves be deduced. Their objective reality however de- 
pends on this, that because they constitute the intellectual 
form of all experience, it is necessary that their application 
should always admit of being exhibited in experience. 

The very name, however, of a concept of reason gives a 
kind of intimation that it is not intended to be limited to 
experience, because it refers to a kind of knowledge of 
which every empirical knowledge is a part only (it may be, 

252 



Transcendental Dialectic 253 

the whole of possible experience or of its empir- [p. 311] 
ical synthesis) : and to which all real experience belongs, 
though it can never fully attain to it. Concepts of reason 
serve for conceiving or comprehending ; concepts of the 
understanding for understanding (perceptions). If they 
contain the unconditioned, they refer to something to 
which all experience may belong, but which itself can 
never become an object of experience; — something to 
which reason in its conclusions from experience leads up, 
and by which it estimates and measures the degree of its 
own empirical use, but which never forms part of empirical 
synthesis. If such concepts possess, notwithstanding, 
objective validity, they may be called conceptus ratiocinati 
(concepts legitimately formed) ; if they have only been 
surreptitiously obtained, by a kind of illusory conclusion, 
they may be called conceptus ratiocinantes (sophistical 
concepts). But as this subject can only be fully treated 
in the chapter on the dialectical conclusions of pure rea- 
son, we shall say no more of it now, but shall only, as we 
gave the name of categories to the pure concepts of the 
understanding, give a new name to the concepts of pure 
reason, and call them transcendental ideas, a name that has 
now to be explained and justified. [p. 312] 



254 Transcendental Dialectic 

TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 

BOOK I 
First Section 

Of Ideas in Gene?'al 

In spite of the great wealth of our languages, a thought- 
ful mind is often at a loss for an expression that should 
square exactly with its concept ; and for want of which 
he cannot make himself altogether intelligible, either to 
others or to himself. To coin new words is to arrogate to 
oneself legislative power in matters of language, a proceed- 
ing which seldom succeeds, so that, before taking so des- 
perate a step, it is always advisable to look about, in dead 
and learned languages, whether they do not contain such a 
concept and its adequate expression. Even if it should 
happen that the original meaning of the word had become 
somewhat uncertain, through carelessness on the part of 
its authors, it is better nevertheless to determine and fix 
the meaning which principally belonged to it (even if it 
should remain doubtful whether it was originally used 
exactly in that meaning), than to spoil our labour by 
becoming unintelligible. 

Whenever therefore there exists one single word only 
for a certain concept, which, in its received meaning, 
exactly covers that concept, and when it is of [p. 313] 
great consequence to keep that concept distinct from other 
related concepts, we ought not to be lavish in using it nor 



Transcendental Dialectic 255 

employ it, for the sake of variety only, as a synonyme in 
the place of others, but carefully preserve its own pecul- 
iar meaning, as otherwise it may easily happen that the 
expression ceases to attract special attention, and loses 
itself in a crowd of other words of very different import, 
so that the thought, which that expression alone could 
have preserved, is lost with it. 

From the way in which Plato uses the term idea, it is 
easy to see that he meant by it something which not only 
was never borrowed from the senses, but which even far 
transcends the concepts of the understanding, with which 
Aristotle occupied himself, there being nothing in experi- 
ence corresponding to the ideas. With him the ideas are 
archetypes of things themselves, not only, like the cate- 
gories, keys to possible experiences. According to his 
opinion they flowed out from the highest reason, which 
however exists no longer in its original state, but has to 
recall, with difficulty, the old but now very obscure ideas, 
which it does by means of reminiscence, commonly called 
philosophy. I shall not enter here on any literary discus- 
sions in order to determine the exact meaning which the 
sublime philosopher himself connected with that expres- 
sion. I shall only remark, that it is by no [p. 314] 
means unusual, in ordinary conversations, as well as in 
written works, that by carefully comparing the thoughts 
uttered by an author on his own subject, we succeed in 
understanding him better than he understood himself, 
because he did not sufficiently define his concept, and thus 
not only spoke, but sometimes even thought, in opposition 
to his own intentions. 

Plato knew very well that our faculty of knowledge 
was filled with a much higher craving than merely to 



256 Transcendental Dialectic 

spell out phenomena according to a synthetical unity, 
and thus to read and understand them as experience. 
He knew that our reason, if left to itself, tries to soar 
up to knowledge to which no object that experience may 
give can ever correspond ; but which nevertheless is real, 
and by no means a mere cobweb of the brain. 

Plato discovered his ideas principally in what is prac- 
tical, 1 that is, in what depends on freedom, which again 
belongs to a class of knowledge which is a [p. 315] 
peculiar product of reason. He who would derive the 
concept of virtue from experience, and would change 
what at best could only serve as an example or an im- 
perfect illustration, into a type and a source of know- 
ledge (as many have really done), would indeed transform 
virtue into an equivocal phantom, changing according 
to times and circumstances, and utterly useless to serve 
as a rule. Everybody can surely perceive that, when a 
person is held up to us as a model of virtue, we have 
always in our own mind the true original with which 
we compare this so-called model, and estimate it accord- 
ingly. The true original is the idea of virtue, in regard 
to which all possible objects of experience may serve as 
examples (proofs of the practicability, in a certain degree, 
of that which is required by the concept of reason), but 
never as archetypes. That no man can ever act up to 

1 It is true, however, that he extended his concept of ideas to speculative 
knowledge also, if only it was pure, and given entirely a priori. He extended 
it even to mathematics, although they can have their object nowhere but in 
possible experience. In this I cannot follow him, nor in the mystical deduc- 
tion of his ideas, and in the exaggerations which led him, as it were, to hypos- 
tasise them, although the high-flown language which he used, when treating 
of this subject, may well admit of a milder interpretation, and one more in 
accordance with the nature of things. 



Transcendental Dialectic 257 

the pure idea of virtue does not in the least prove the 
chimerical nature of that concept ; for every judgment 
as to the moral worth or unworth of actions is possi- 
ble by means of that idea only, which forms, therefore, 
the necessary foundation for every approach to moral 
perfection, however far the impediments inherent in 
human nature, to the extent of which it is difficult to 
determine, may keep us removed from it. 

The Platonic Republic has been supposed to [p. 316] 
be a striking example of purely imaginary perfection. 
It has become a byword, as something that could exist 
in the brain of an idle thinker only, and Brucker thinks 
it ridiculous that Plato could have said that no prince 
could ever govern well, unless he participated in the 
ideas. We should do better, however, to follow up this 
thought and endeavour (where that excellent philosopher 
leaves us without his guidance) to place it in a clearer 
light by our own efforts, rather than to throw it aside as 
useless, under the miserable and very dangerous pretext 
of its impracticability. A constitution founded on the 
greatest possible human freedom, according to laws 
which enable the freedom of each individual to exist by 
the side of the freedom of others (without any regard 
to the highest possible human happiness, because that 
must necessarily follow by itself), is, to say the least, a 
necessary idea, on which not only the first plan of a 
constitution or a state, but all laws must be based, it 
being by no means necessary to take account from the 
beginning of existing impediments, which may owe their 
origin not so much to human nature itself as to the 
actual neglect of true ideas in legislation. For nothing 
can be more mischievous and more unworthy a philoso- 



258 Transcendental Dialectic 

pher than the vulgar appeal to what is called adverse 
experience, which possibly might never have existed, if 
at the proper time institutions had been framed accord- 
ing to those ideas, and not according to crude [p. 317] 
concepts, which, because they were derived from ex- 
perience only, have marred all good intentions. The 
more legislation and government are in harmony with 
that idea, the rarer, no doubt, punishments would become; 
and it is therefore quite rational to say (as Plato did), 
that in a perfect state no punishments would be neces- 
sary. And though this can never be realised, yetv the 
idea is quite correct which sets up this maximum as an 
archetype, in order thus to bring our legislative constitu- 
tions nearer and nearer to the greatest possible perfection. 
Which may be the highest degree where human nature 
must stop, and how wide the chasm may be between 
the idea and its realisation, no one can or ought to deter- 
mine, because it is this very freedom that may be able 
to transcend any limits hitherto assigned to it. 

It is not only, however, where human reason asserts its 
free causality and ideas become operative agents (with 
regard to actions and their objects), that is to say, in 
the sphere of ethics, but also in nature itself, that Plato 
rightly discovered clear proofs of its origin from ideas. 
A plant, an animal, the regular plan of the cosmos (most 
likely therefore the whole order of nature), show clearly 
that they are possible according to ideas only; [p. 318] 
and that though no single creature, under the singular 
conditions of its existence, can fully correspond with the 
idea of what is mo'st perfect of its kind (as little as any 
individual man with the idea of humanity, which, for all 
that, he carries in his mind as the archetype of all his 



Transcendental Dialectic 259 

actions), those ideas are nevertheless determined through- 
out in the highest understanding each by itself as un- 
changeable, and are in fact the original causes of things, 
although it can only be said of the whole of them, con- 
nected together in the universe, that it is perfectly 
adequate to the idea. If we make allowance for the 
exaggerated expression, the effort of the philosopher to 
ascend from the mere observing and copying of the 
physical side of nature to an architectonic system of 
it, teleologically, that is according to ideas, deserves re- 
spect and imitation, while with regard to the principles 
of morality, legislation, and religion, where it is the ideas 
themselves that make experience of the good possible, 
though they can never be fully realised in experience, 
such efforts are of very eminent merit, which those 
only fail to recognise who attempt to judge it accord- 
ing to empirical rules, the very validity of which, as 
principles, was meant to be denied by Plato. With re- 
gard to nature, it is experience no doubt which supplies 
us with rules, and is the foundation of all truth : with 
regard to moral laws, on the contrary, experience is, alas ! 
but the source of illusion ; and it is altogether reprehen- 
sible to derive or limit the laws of what we [p. 319] 
ought to do according to our experience of what has 
been done. 

Instead of considering these subjects, the full develop- 
ment of which constitutes in reality the peculiar character 
and dignity of philosophy, we have to occupy ourselves 
at present with a task less brilliant, though not less use- 
ful, of building and strengthening the foundation of that 
majestic edifice of morality, which at present is under- 
mined by all sorts of mole-tracks, the work of our reason, 



260 Transcendental Dialectic 

which thus vainly, but always with the same confidence, 
is searching for buried treasures. It is our duty at pres- 
ent to acquire an accurate knowledge of the transcenden- 
tal use of the pure reason, its principles and ideas, in 
order to be able to determine and estimate correctly their 
influence and value. But before I leave this preliminary 
introduction, I beg those who really care for philosophy 
(which means more than is commonly supposed), if they 
are convinced by what I have said and shall still have to 
say, to take the term idea, in its original meaning, under 
their special protection, so that it should no longer be lost 
among other expressions, by which all sorts of representa- 
tions are loosely designated, to the great detriment of 
philosophy. There is no lack of names adequate to 
express every kind of representation, without our having 
to encroach on the property of others. I shall [p. 320] 
give a graduated list of them. The whole class may be 
called representation {irpraescntatio). Under it stands con- 
scious representation, perception (pereeptio). A perception 
referring to the subject only, as a modification of his state, 
is se?isation (sensatio), while an objective sensation is 
called knowledge, cognition (cognitio). Cognition is either 
intuition or concept (intnitus vel conceptus). The former 
refers immediately to an object and is singular, the latter 
refers to it mediately, that is, by means of a characteristic 
mark that can be shared by several things in common. A 
concept is either empirical or pure, and the pure concept, 
so far as it has its origin in the understanding only (not 
in the pure image of sensibility) is called notion (notio). 
A concept formed of notions and transcending all possible 
experience is an idea, or a concept of reason. To any one 
who has once accustomed himself to these distinctions, it 



II 



Transcendental Dialectic 261 

must be extremely irksome to hear the representation of 
red colour called an idea, though it could not even be 
rightly called a notion (a concept of the understanding). 

TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 

[p- 321] 

BOOK I 

Second Section 

Of Transce7idental Ideas 

We had an instance in our transcendental Analytic, 
how the mere logical form of our knowledge could con- 
tain the origin of pure concepts a priori, which represent 
objects antecedently to all experience, or rather indicate 
a synthetical unity by which alone an empirical knowledge 
of objects becomes possible. The form of judgments 
(changed into a concept of the synthesis of intuitions) 
gave us the categories that guide and determine the use 
of the understanding in every experience. We may ex- 
pect, therefore, that the form of the syllogisms, if referred 
to the synthetical unity of intuitions, according to the 
manner of the categories, will contain the origin of cer- 
tain concepts a priori, to be called concepts of pure reason, 
or transcendental ideas, which ought to determine the use 
of the understanding within the whole realm of experience, 
according to principles. 

The function of reason in its syllogisms consists in the 
universality of cognition, according to concepts, and the 
syllogism itself is in reality a judgment, deter- [p. 322] 
mined a priori in the whole extent of its condition. The 



262 Transcendental Dialectic 

proposition ' Caius is mortal,' might be taken from experi- 
ence, by means of the understanding only. But what we 
want is a concept, containing the condition under which 
the predicate (assertion in general) of that judgment is 
given (here the concept of man), and after I have arranged 
it under this condition, taken in its whole extent (all men 
are mortal), I proceed to determine accordingly the know- 
ledge of my object (Caius is mortal). 

What we are doing therefore in the conclusion of a syl- 
logism is to restrict the predicate to a certain object, after 
we have used it first in the major, in its whole extent, 
under a certain condition. This completeness of its ex- 
tent, in reference to such a condition, is called universality 
(universalitas) ; and to this corresponds, in the synthesis 
of intuitions, the totality (universitas) of conditions. The 
transcendental concept of reason is, therefore, nothing 
but the concept of the totality of the conditions of any- 
thing given as conditioned. As therefore the uncondi- 
tioned alone renders a totality of conditions possible, and 
as conversely the totality of conditions must always be 
unconditioned, it follows that a pure concept of reason in 
general may be explained as a concept of the uncondi- 
tioned, so far as it contains a basis for the synthesis of 
the conditioned. 

As many kinds of relations as there are, which [p. 323] 
the understanding represents to itself by means of the 
categories, so many pure concepts of the reason we shall 
find, that is, first, the unco?iditioned of the categorical syn- 
thesis in a subject ; secondly, the unconditioned of the 
hypothetical synthesis of the members of a series ; thirdly, 
the unconditioned of the disjunctive synthesis of the parts 
of a system. 






Transcendc7ital Dialectic 263 

There are exactly as many kinds of -syllogisms, each of 
which tries to advance by means of pro-syllogisms to the 
unconditioned : the first to the subject, which itself is no 
longer a predicate ; the second to the presupposition, 
which presupposes nothing else ; and the third to an 
aggregate of the members of a division, which requires 
nothing else, in order to render the division of the concept 
complete. Hence the pure concepts of reason implying 
totality in the synthesis of the conditions are necessary, 
at least as problems, in order to carry the unity of the 
understanding to the unconditioned, if that is possible, 
and they are founded in the nature of human reason, even 
though these transcendental concepts may be without any 
proper application in concreto, and thus have no utility 
beyond bringing the understanding into a direction where 
its application, being extended as far as possible, is brought 
throughout in harmony with itself. 

Whilst speaking here of the totality of condi- [p. 324] 
tions, and of the unconditioned, as the common title of 
all the concepts of reason, we again meet with a term 
which we cannot do without, but which, by long abuse, 
has become so equivocal that we cannot employ it with 
safety. The term absolute is one of those few words 
which, in their original meaning, were fitted to a concept, 
which afterwards could not be exactly fitted with any 
other word of the same language, and the loss of which, 
or what is the same, the loose employment of which, 
entails the loss of the concept itself, and that of a concept 
with which reason is constantly occupied, and cannot dis- 
pense with without real damage to all transcendental in- 
vestigations. At present the term absolute is frequently 
used simply in order to indicate that something applies 



264 Transcendental Dialectic 

to an object, considered in itself, and thus as it were inter- 
nally. In this way absolutely possible would mean that 
something is possible in itself (interne), which in reality 
is the least that could be said of it. It is sometimes 
used also to indicate that something is valid in all 
respects (without limitation), as people speak of absolute 
sovereignty. In this way absolutely possible would mean 
that which is possible in all respects, and this is again 
the utmost that could be said of the possibility of a 
thing. It is true that these two significations [p. 325] 
sometimes coincide, because something that is internally 
impossible is impossible also in every respect, and there- 
fore absolutely impossible. But in most cases they are 
far apart, and I am by no means justified in concluding 
that, because something is possible in itself, it is possible 
also in every respect, that is, absolutely possible. Nay, 
with regard to absolute necessity, I shall be able to show 
hereafter that it by no means always depends on internal 
necessity, and that the two cannot therefore be considered 
synonymous. No doubt, if the opposite of a thing is in- 
trinsically impossible, that opposite is also impossible in 
every respect, and the thing itself therefore absolutely 
necessary. But I cannot conclude conversely, that the 
opposite of what is absolutely necessary is internally 
impossible, or that the absolute necessity of things is 
the same as an internal necessity. For in certain cases 
that internal necessity is an entirely empty expression, 
with which we cannot connect the least concept, while 
that of the necessity of a thing in every respect (with 
regard to all that is possible) implies very peculiar deter- 
minations. As therefore the loss of a concept which has 
acted a great part in speculative philosophy can never 



Transcendental^ Dialectic 265 

be indifferent to philosophers, I hope they will also take 
some interest in the definition and careful preservation of 
the term with which that concept is connected. 

I shall therefore use the term absolute in this [p. 326] 
enlarged meaning only, in opposition to that which is 
valid relatively and in particular respects only, the latter 
being restricted to conditions, the former free from any 
restrictions whatsoever. 

It is then the absolute totality in the synthesis of 
conditions at which the transcendental concept of reason 
aims, nor does it rest satisfied till it has reached that 
which is unconditioned absolutely and in every respect. 
Pure reason leaves everything to the understanding, which 
has primarily to do with the objects of intuition, or rather 
their synthesis in imagination. It is only the absolute 
totality in the use of the concepts of the understanding, 
which reason reserves for itself, while trying to carry 
the synthetical unity, which is realised in the category, 
to the absolutely unconditioned. We might therefore 
call the latter the unity of the phenomena in reason, 
the former, which is expressed by the category, the 
unity in the understanding. Hence reason is only con- 
cerned with the use of the understanding, not so far as 
it contains the basis of possible experience (for the abso- 
lute totality of conditions is not a concept that can be 
used in experience, because no experience is uncondi- 
tioned), but in order to impart to it a direction towards 
a certain unity of which the understanding knows nothing, 
and which is meant to comprehend all acts of the under- 
standing, with regard to any object, into an [p. 327] 
absolute whole. On this account' the objective use of 
the pure concepts of reason must always be transcendent: 



266 Transcendental Dialectic 

while that of the pure concepts of the understanding 
must always be immanent, being by its very nature 
restricted to possible experience. 

By idea I understand the necessary concept of reason, 
to which the senses can supply no corresponding object. 
The concepts of reason, therefore, of which we have been 
speaking, are transcendental ideas. They are concepts of 
pure reason, so far as they regard all empirical knowledge 
as determined by an absolute totality of conditions. They 
are not mere fancies, but supplied to us by the very 
nature of reason, and referring by necessity to the whole 
use of the understanding. They are, lastly, transcendent, 
as overstepping the limits of all experience which can 
never supply an object adequate to the transcendental idea. 
If we speak of an idea, we say a great deal with respect to 
the object (as the object of the pure understanding) but 
very little with respect to the subject, that is, with respect 
to its reality under empirical conditions, because an idea, 
being the concept of a maximum, can never be adequately 
given in concrete As the latter is really the whole aim 
in the merely speculative use of reason, and as [p. 328] 
the mere approaching a concept, which in reality can 
never be reached, is the same as if the concept were 
missed altogether, people, when speaking of such a con- 
cept, are wont to say, it is an idea only. Thus one might 
say, that the absolute whole of all phenomena is an idea 
only, for as we can never form a representation of such a 
whole, it remains a problem without a solution. In the 
practical use of the understanding, on the contrary, where 
we are only concerned with practice, according to rules, 
the idea of practical reason can always be realised in con- 
creto, although partially only ; nay, it is the indispensable 



Transcendental Dialectic 267 

condition of all practical use of reason. The practical 
realisation of the idea is here always limited and deficient, 
but these limits cannot be denned, and it always remains 
under the influence of a concept, implying absolute com- 
pleteness and perfection. The practical idea is therefore 
in this case truly fruitful, and, with regard to practical 
conduct, indispensable and necessary. In it pure reason 
becomes a cause and active power, capable of realising 
what is contained in its concept. Hence we cannot say 
of wisdom, as if contemptuously, that it is an idea only, 
but for the very reason that it contains the idea of the 
necessary unity of all possible aims, it must determine 
all practical acts, as an original and, at least, limitative 
condition. 

Although we must say that all transcendental [p. 329] 
concepts of reason are ideas only, they are not therefore 
to be considered as superfluous and useless. For although 
we cannot by them determine any object, they may never- 
theless, even unobserved, supply the understanding with a 
canon or rule of its extended and consistent use, by which, 
though no object can be better known than it is accord- 
ing to its concepts, yet the understanding may be better 
guided onwards in its knowledge, not to mention that 
they may possibly render practicable a transition from 
physical to practical concepts, and thus impart to moral 
ideas a certain strength and connection with the specu- 
lative knowledge of reason. On all this more light will 
be thrown in the sequel. 

For our present purposes we are obliged to set aside 
a consideration of these practical ideas, and to treat of 
reason in its speculative, or rather, in a still more limited 
sense, its purely transcendental use. Here we must fol- 



268 Traftscendental Dialectic 

low the same road which we took before in the deduction 
of the categories ; that is, we must consider the logical 
form of all knowledge of reason, and see whether, per- 
haps, by this logical form, reason may become a source 
of concepts also, which enable us to regard objects in 
themselves, as determined synthetically a priori in rela- 
tion to one or other of the functions of reason. 

Reason, if considered as a faculty of a certain [p. 330] 
logical form of knowledge, is the faculty of concluding, 
that is, of judging mediately, by bringing the condition 
of a possible under the condition of a given judgment. 
The given judgment is the general rule {major). Bring- 
ing the condition of another possible judgment under the 
condition of the rule, which may be called subsumption, 
is the minor, and the actual judgment, which contains the 
assertion of the rule in the subsumed case, is the conclu- 
sion. We know that the rule asserts something as gen- 
eral under a certain condition. The condition of the rule 
is then found to exist in a given case. Then that which, 
under that condition, was asserted as generally valid, has 
to be considered as valid in that given case also, which 
complies with that condition. It is easy to see therefore 
that reason arrives at knowledge by acts of the under- 
standing, which constitute a series of conditions. If I 
arrive at the proposition that all bodies are changeable, 
only by starting from a more remote knowledge (which 
does not yet contain the concept of body, but a condition 
of such a concept only), namely, that all which is com- 
posite is changeable ; and then proceed to something less 
remotely known, and depending on the former, namely, 
that bodies are composite ; and, lastly, only advance to a 
third proposition, connecting the more remote knowledge 



Transcendental Dialectic 269 

(changeable) with the given case, and conclude that bodies 
therefore are changeable, we see that we have [p. 331] 
passed through a series of conditions (premisses) before 
we arrived at knowledge (conclusion). Every series, the 
exponent of which (whether of a categorical or hypothet- 
ical judgment) is given, can be continued, so that this 
procedure of reason leads to ratiocinatio polysyllogistica, 
a series of conclusions which, either on the side of the 
conditions {per prosy llogismos) or of the conditioned {per 
episy llogismos), may be continued indefinitely. 

It is soon perceived, however, that the chain or series 
of prosyllogisms, that is, of knowledge deduced on the 
side of reasons or conditions of a given knowledge, in 
other words, the ascending series of syllogisms, must stand 
in a very different relation to the faculty of reason from 
that of the descending series, that is, of the progress of 
reason on the side of the conditioned, by means of episyl- 
logisms. For, as in the former case the knowledge em- 
bodied in the conclusion is given as conditioned only, it 
is impossible to arrive at it by means of reason in any 
other way except under the supposition at least that all 
the members of the series on the side of the conditions 
are given (totality in the series of premisses), because it 
is under that supposition only that the contemplated judg- 
ment a priori is possible ; while on the side of the condi- 
tioned, or of the inferences, we can only think [p. 332] 
of a growing series, not of one presupposed as complete 
or given, that is, of a potential progression only. Hence, 
when our knowledge is considered as conditioned, reason 
is constrained to look upon the series of conditions in the 
ascending line as complete, and given in their totality. 
But if the same knowledge is looked upon at the same 



270 Transcendental Dialectic 

time as a condition of other kinds of knowledge, which 
constitute among themselves a series of inferences in a 
descending line, it is indifferent to reason how far that 
progression may go a parte posteriori, or whether a total- 
ity of the series is possible at all, because such a series 
is not required for the conclusion in hand, which is suffi- 
ciently determined and secured on grounds a parte priori. 
Whether the series of premisses on the side of the con- 
ditions have a something that stands first as the highest 
condition, or whether it be without limits a parte priori, 
it must at all events contain a totality of conditions, even 
though we should never succeed in comprehending it ; 
and the whole series must be unconditionally true, if the 
conditioned, which is considered as a consequence result- 
ing from it, is to be accepted as true. This is a demand 
of reason which pronounces its knowledge as determined 
a priori and as necessary, either in itself, and in that case 
it requires no reasons, or, if derivative, as a member of a 
series of reasons, which itself is unconditionally true. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 

[P- 333] 

BOOK I 

Third Section 

System of Transcendental Ideas 

We are not at present concerned with logical Dialectic, 
which takes no account of the contents of knowledge, and 
has only to lay bare the illusions in the form of syllogisms, 



Transcendental Dialectic 271 

but with transcendental Dialectic, which is supposed to 
contain entirely a priori the origin of certain kinds of 
knowledge, arising from pure reason, and of certain de- 
duced concepts, the object of which can never be given 
empirically, and which therefore lie entirely outside the 
domain of the pure understanding. We gathered from 
the natural relation which must exist between the tran- 
scendental and the logical use of our knowledge, in 
syllogisms as well as in judgments, "that there must be 
three kinds of dialectic syllogisms, and no more, corre- 
sponding to the three kinds of conclusion by which reason 
may from principles arrive at knowledge, and that in all of 
these it is the object of reason to ascend from the condi- 
tioned synthesis, to which the understanding is always 
restricted, to an unconditioned synthesis, which the under- 
standing can never reach. 

The relations which all our representations share in 
common are, 1st, relation to the subject; 2ndly, the rela- 
tion to objects, either as phenomena, or as ob- [p. 334] 
jects of thought in general. If we connect this subdivi- 
sion with the former division, we see that the relation of 
the representations of which we can form a concept or an 
idea can only be threefold: 1st, the relation to the sub- 
ject ; 2ndly, the relation to the manifold of the phenom- 
enal object ; 3rdly, the relation to all things in general. 

All pure concepts in general aim at a synthetical unity 
of representations, while concepts of pure reason (tran- 
scendental ideas) aim at unconditioned synthetical unity 
of all conditions. All transcendental ideas therefore can 
be arranged in three classes : the first containing the 
absolute (unconditioned) unity of the thinking subject ; the 
seco7id the absolute unity of the series of conditions of 



2J2 



Tra nscendental Dialectic 



phenomena ; the third the absolute unity of the conditio?i 
of all objects of thought in general. 

The thinking subject is the object-matter of psychology, 
the system of all phenomena (the world) the object-matter 
of cosmology, and the being which contains the highest 
condition of the possibility of all that can be thought (the 
Being of all beings), the object-matter of theology. Thus 
it is pure reason which supplies the idea of a transcen- 
dental science of the soul (psychologia ratioualis), of a tran- 
scendental science of the world (cosmologia rationalis), 
and, lastly, of a transcendental science of God (theologia 
transcendentalis) . Even the mere plan of any [p. 335] 
one of these three sciences does not come from the under- 
standing, even if connected with the highest logical use of 
reason, that is, with all possible conclusions, leading from 
one of its objects (phenomenon) to all others, and on to 
the most remote parts of any possible empirical synthesis, 
— but is altogether a pure and genuine product or rather 
problem of pure reason. 

What kinds of pure concepts of reason arc comprehended 
under these three titles of all transcendental ideas will be 
fully explained in the following chapter. They follow the 
thread of the categories, for pure reason never refers 
direct to objects, but to the concepts of objects framed by 
the understanding. Nor can it be rendered clear, except 
hereafter in a detailed explanation, how first, reason 
simply by the synthetical use of the same function which 
it employs for categorical syllogisms is necessarily led on 
to the concept of the absolute unity of the thinking sub- 
ject ; secondly, how the logical procedure in hypothetical 
syllogisms leads to the idea of something absolutely uncon- 
ditioned, in a series of given conditions, and how, thirdly, 



Transcende7ital Dialectic 273 

the mere form of the disjunctive syllogism produces 
necessarily the highest concept of reason, that of a Being 
of all beings ; a thought which, at first sight, seems 
extremely paradoxical. [p. 336] 

No objective deduction, like that given of the categories, 
is possible with regard to these transcendental ideas ; 
they are ideas only, and for that very reason they have no 
relation to any object corresponding to them in experi- 
ence. What we could undertake to give was a subjective 
deduction 1 of them from the nature of reason, and this 
has been given in the present chapter. 

We can easily perceive that pure reason has no other 
aim but the absolute totality of synthesis on the side of 
conditions (whether of inherence, dependence, or concur- 
rence), and that it has nothing to do with the absolute 
completeness on the part of the conditioned. It is the 
former only which is required for presupposing the whole 
series of conditions, and thus presenting it a priori to the 
understanding. If once we have a given condition, com- 
plete and unconditioned itself, no concept of reason is 
required to continue the series, because the understanding 
takes by itself every step downward from the condition to 
the conditioned. The transcendental ideas therefore serve 
only for ascending in the series of conditions till they 
reach the unconditioned, that is, the principles. With 
regard to descending to the conditioned, there is no doubt 
a widely extended logical use which our reason [p. 337] 
may make of the rules of the understanding, but no tran- 
scendental one ; and if we form an idea of the absolute 
totality of such a synthesis (by progresses), as, for 

1 Instead of Anleitung read Ableitung. 



274 Transcendental Dialectic 

instance, of the whole series of all future changes in the 
world, this is only a thought (ens rationis) that may be 
thought if we like, but is not presupposed as necessary by 
reason. For the possibility of the conditioned, the totality 
of its conditions only, but not of its consequences, is pre- 
supposed. Such a concept therefore is not one of the 
transcendental ideas, with which alone we have to deal. 

Finally, we can perceive, that there is among the tran- 
scendental ideas themselves a certain connection and 
unity by which pure reason brings all its knowledge into 
one system. There is in the progression from our know- 
ledge of ourselves (the soul) to a knowledge of the world, 
and through it to a knowledge of the Supreme Being, 
something so natural that it looks like the logical progres- 
sion of reason from premisses to a conclusion. 1 Whether 
there exists here a real though hidden relationship, such 
as we saw before between the logical and transcendental 
use of reason, is also one of the questions the answer to 
which can only be given in the progress of these investi- 
gations. For the present we have achieved what we 
wished to achieve, by removing the transcen- [p. 338] 
dental concepts of reason, which in the systems of other 
philosophers are generally mixed up with other concepts, 
"without being distinguished even from the concepts of the 
understanding, out of so equivocal a position ; by being 
able to determine their origin and thereby at the same 
time their number, which can never be exceeded, and by 
thus bringing them into a systematic connection, marking 
out and enclosing thereby a separate field for pure reason. 

1 See Supplement XXVI. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 



BOOK II 

OF THE DIALECTICAL CONCLUSIONS OF PURE REASON 

One may say that the object of a purely transcendental 
idea is something of which we have no concept, although 
the idea is produced with necessity according to the origi- 
nal laws of reason. Nor is it possible indeed to form of an 
object that should be adequate to the demands of reason, 
a concept of the understanding, that is, a concept which 
could be shown in any possible experience, and rendered 
intuitive. It would be better, however, and less [p. 339] 
liable to misunderstandings, to say that we can have no 
knowledge of an object corresponding to an idea, but a 
problematic concept only. 

The transcendental (subjective) reality, at least of pure 
concepts of reason, depends on our being led to such ideas 
by a necessary syllogism of reason. There will be syllo- 
gisms therefore which have no empirical premisses, and 
by means of which we conclude from something which we 
know to something else of which we have no concept, and 
to which, constrained by an inevitable illusion, we never- 
theless attribute objective reality. As regards their result, 

275 



276 Transcendental Dialectic 

such syllogisms are rather to be called sophistical than 
rational, although, as regards their origin, they may claim 
the latter name, because they are not purely fictitious or 
accidental, but products of the very nature of reason. 
They are sophistications, not of men, but of pure reason 
itself, from which even the wisest of men cannot escape. 
All he can do is, with great effort, to guard against error, 
though never able to rid himself completely of an illusion 
which constantly torments and mocks him. 

Of these dialectical syllogisms of reason there are there- 
fore three classes only, that is as many as the ideas to 
which their conclusions lead. In the syllogism [p. 340] 
of \hz first class, I conclude from the transcendental con- 
cept of the subject, which contains nothing manifold, the 
absolute* unity of the subject itself, of which however I 
have no concept in this regard. This dialectical syllogism 
I shall call the transcendental paralogism. 

The second class of the so-called sophistical syllogisms 
aims at the transcendental concept of an absolute totality 
in the series of conditions to any given phenomenon ; and 
I conclude from the fact that my concept of the uncon- 
ditioned synthetical unity of the series is always self- 
contradictory on one side, the correctness of the opposite 
unity, of which nevertheless I have no concept either. 
The state of reason in this class of dialectical syllogisms, 
I shall call the antinomy of pure reason. 

Lastly, according to the third class of sophistical syl- 
logisms, I conclude from the totality of conditions, under 
which objects in general, so far as they can be given to me, 
must be thought, the absolute synthetical unity of all con- 
ditions of the possibility of things in general ; that is to 
say, I conclude from things which I do not know accord- 



Transceiidcntal Dialectic 277 

ing to their mere transcendental 1 concept, a Being of all 
beings, which I know still less through a transcendental 
concept, and of the unconditioned necessity of which I 
can form no concept whatever. This dialectical syllogism 
of reason I shall call the ideal of pure reason. 

1 Transcendent is a misprint. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 

[p. 341] 

BOOK II 
CHAPTER I 

OF THE PARALOGISMS OF PURE REASON 

The logical paralogism consists in the formal faulti- 
ness of a conclusion, without any reference to its con- 
tents. But a transcendental paralogism arises from a 
transcendental cause, which drives us to a formally false 
conclusion. Such a paralogism, therefore, depends most 
likely on the very nature of human reason, and produces 
an illusion which is inevitable, though not insoluble. 

We now come to a concept which was not inserted in 
our general list of transcendental concepts, and yet must 
be reckoned with them, without however changing that 
table in the least, or proving it to be deficient. This is 
the concept, or, if the term is preferred, the judgment, 
/ think. It is easily seen, however, that this concept is 
the vehicle of all concepts in general, therefore of transcen- 
dental concepts also, being always comprehended among 
them, and being itself transcendental also, though with- 
out any claim to a special title, inasmuch as it serves 
only to introduce all thought, as belonging to conscious- 

278 



i 



Transcendefital Dialectic 279 

ness. However free that concept may be from all that 
is empirical (impressions of the senses), it serves [p. 342] 
nevertheless to distinguish two objects within the nature 
of our faculty of representation. /, as thinking, am an 
object of the internal sense, and am called soul. That 
which is an object of the external senses is called body. 
The term /, as a thinking being, signifies the object of 
psychology, which may be called the rational science of 
the soul, supposing that we want to know nothing about 
the soul except what, independent of all experience (which 
determines the I more especially and in concrete), can be 
deduced from the concept of I, so far as it is present in 
every act of thought. 

Now the rational science 'of the soul is really such an 
undertaking ; for if the smallest empirical element of my 
thought or any particular perception of my internal state 
were mixed up with the sources from which that science 
derives its materials, it would be an empirical, ,and no 
longer a purely rational science of the soul. There is 
therefore a pretended science, founded on the single propo- 
sition of / think, and the soundness or unsoundness of 
which may well be examined in this place, according to 
the principles of transcendental philosophy. It should 
not be objected that even in that proposition, which ex- 
presses the perception of oneself, I have an internal 
experience, and that therefore the rational science of the 
soul, which is founded on it, can never be quite [p. 343] 
pure, but rests, to a certain extent, on an empirical prin- 
ciple. For this inner perception is nothing more than 
the mere apperception, / think, without which even all 
transcendental concepts would be impossible, in which 
we really say, I think the substance, I- think the cause, 



280 Transcendental Dialectic 

etc. This internal experience in general and its pos- 
sibility, or perception in general and its relation to other 
perceptions, there being no special distinction or em- 
pirical determination of it, cannot be regarded as em- 
pirical knowledge, but must be regarded as knowledge 
of the empirical in general, and falls therefore under 
the investigation of the possibility of all experience, which 
investigation is certainly transcendental. The smallest 
object of perception (even pleasure and pain), if added 
to the general representation of self-consciousness, would 
at once change rational into empirical psychology. 

I think is, therefore, the only text of rational psychology, 
out of which it must evolve all its wisdom. It is easily 
seen that this thought, if it is to be applied to any object 
(my self), cannot contain any but transcendental predi- 
cates, because the smallest empirical predicate would 
spoil the rational purity of the science, and its indepen- 
dence of all experience. 

We shall therefore follow the thread of the [p. 344] 
categories, with this difference, however, that as here the 
first thing which is given is a thing, the I, a thinking 
being, we must begin with the category of substance, by 
which a thing in itself is represented, and then proceed 
backwards, though without changing the respective order 
of the categories, as given before in our table. The 
topic of the rational science of the soul, from which has 
to be derived whatever else that science may contain, 
is therefore the following.. 



Transcendental Dialectic 281 

I 
The Soul is substance. 
II III 

As regards its quality, simple. As regards the different 

times in which it exists, 
numerically identical, that 
is unity (not plurality) . 

IV 

It is in relation to 
possible objects in space. 1 

All concepts of pure psychology arise from [p. 345] 
these elements, simply by way of combination, and with- 
out the admixture of any other principle. This sub- 
stance, taken simply as the object of the internal sense, 
gives us the concept of immateriality ; and as simple 
substance, that of incorruptibility ; its identity, as that 
of an intellectual substance, gives us personality ; and 
all these three together, spirituality ; its relation to 
objects in space gives us the concept of commercium 
(intercourse) with bodies ; the pure psychology thus rep- 
resenting the thinking substance as the principle of 
life in matter, that is, as soul (anima), and as the ground 
of animality ; which again, as restricted by spirituality, 
gives us the concept of immortality. 

To these concepts refer four paralogisms of a transcen- 

1 The reader, who may not guess at once the psychological purport of these 
transcendental and abstract terms, or understand why the latter attribute of 
the soul belongs to the category of existence, will find their full explanation 
and justification in the sequel. Moreover, I have to apologise for the many 
Latin expressions which, contrary to good taste, have crept in instead of their 
native equivalents, not only here, but throughout the whole of the work. My 
only excuse is, that I thought it better to sacrifice something of the elegance 
of language, rather than to throw any impediments in the way of real students, 
by the use of inaccurate and obscure expressions. 



282 Transcendental Dialectic 

dental psychology, which is falsely supposed to be a 
science of pure reason, concerning the nature of our 
thinking being. We can, however, use as the foundation 
of such a science nothing but the single, and in itself per- 
fectly empty, representation of the /, of which [p. 346] 
we cannot even say that it is a concept, but merely a 
consciousness that accompanies all concepts. By this /, 
or he, or it (the thing), which thinks, nothing is repre- 
sented beyond a transcendental subject of thoughts = x, 
which is known only through the thoughts that are its 
predicates, and of which, apart from them, we can never 
have the slightest concept, so that we are really turning 
round it in a perpetual circle, having already to use its 
representation, before we can form any judgment about it. 
And this inconvenience is really inevitable, because con- 
sciousness in itself is not so much a representation, dis- 
tinguishing a particular object, but really a form of repre- 
sentation in general, in so far as it is to be called 
knowledge, of which alone I can say that I think some- 
thing by it. 

It must seem strange, however, from the very begin- 
ning, that the condition under which I think, and which 
therefore is a property of my own subject only, should be 
valid at the same time for everything which thinks, and 
that, depending on a proposition which seems to be em- 
pirical, we should venture to found the apodictical and 
general judgment, namely, that everything which thinks 
is such as the voice of my own consciousness declares it 
to be within me. The reason of it is, that we are con- 
strained to attribute a priori to things all the qualities 
which form the conditions, under which alone [p. 347] 
we are able to think them. Now it is impossible for me 



Transcendental Dialectic 283 

to form the smallest representation of a thinking being by 
any external experience, but I can do it through self-con- 
sciousness only. Such objects therefore are nothing but 
a transference of my own consciousness to other things, 
which thus, and thus only, can be represented as thinking 
beings. The proposition / think is used in this case, how- 
ever, as problematical only ; not so far as it may contain 
the perception of an existence (the Cartesian, cogito, ergo 
sum), but with regard to its mere possibility, in order to 
see what properties may be deduced from such a simple 
proposition with regard to its subject, whether such sub- 
ject exists or not. 

If our knowledge of thinking beings in general, so far 
as it is derived from pure reason, were founded on more 
than the cogito, and if we made use at the same time of 
observations on the play of our thoughts and the natural 
laws of the thinking self, derived from them, we should 
have before us an empirical psychology, which would form 
a kind of physiology of the internal sense, and perhaps ex- 
plain its manifestations, but would never help us to under- 
stand such properties as do not fall under any possible 
experience (as, for instance, simplicity), or to teach apodic- 
tically anything touching the nature of thinking beings in 
general. It would not therefore be a rational psychology. 

As the proposition / think (taken problemati- [p. 348] 
cally) contains the form of every possible judgment of the 
understanding, and accompanies all categories as their 
vehicle, it must be clear that the conclusions to be drawn 
from if can only contain a transcendental use of the 
understanding, which declines all admixture of experience, 
and of the achievements of which, after what has been said 
before, we cannot form any very favourable anticipations. 



284 Transcendental Dialectic 

We shall therefore follow it, with a critical eye, through all 
the predicaments of pure psychology. 1 

I The First Paralogism of Substantiality 

That the representation of which is the absolute subject 
of our judgments, and cannot be used therefore as the 
determination of any other thing, is the substance. 

I, as a thinking being, am the absolute subject of all my 
possible judgments, and this representation of myself can 
never be used as the predicate of any other thing. 

Therefore I, as a thinking being (Soul), am Substance. 

Criticism of the First Paralogism of Pure' 2 ' Psychology 

We showed in the analytical portion of transcendental 
logic, that pure categories, and among them that of sub- 
stance, have in themselves no objective meaning, unless 
they rest on some intuition, and are applied to [p. 349] 
the manifold of such intuitions as functions of synthetical 
unity. Without this they are merely functions of a judg- 
ment without contents. I may say of everything, that it 
is a substance, so far as I distinguish it from what are mere 
predicates and determinations. Now in all our think- 
ing the I is the subject, in which thoughts are inherent 
as determinations only ; nor can that I ever be used as a 
determination of any other thing. Thus everybody is con- 
strained to look upon himself as the substance, and on 
thinking as the accidents only of his being, and determi- 
nations of his state. 

1 All that follows from here to the beginning of the second chapter, is left 
out in the Second Edition, and replaced by Supplement XXVII. 

2 Afterwards transcendental instead of pure. 



Transcendental Dialectic 285 

But what use are we to make of such a concept of a 
substance ? That I, as a thinking being, continue for my- 
self, and naturally neither arise nor: perish, is no legitimate 
deduction from it ; and yet this conclusion would be the 
only advantage that could be gained from the concept of 
the substantiality of my own thinking subject, and, but for 
that, I could do very well without it. 

So far from being able to deduce these properties from 
the pure category of substance, we have on the contrary 
to observe the permanency of an object in our experience 
and then lay hold of this permanency, if we wish to apply 
to it the empirically useful concept of substance. In this 
case, however, we had no experience to lay hold of, but 
have only formed a deduction from the concept [p. 350] 
of the relation which all thinking has to the I, as the com- 
mon subject to which it belongs. Nor should we, what- 
ever we did, succeed by any certain observation in proving 
such permanency. For though the I exists in all thoughts, 
not the slightest intuition is connected with that repre- 
sentation, by which it might be distinguished from other 
objects of intuition. We may very well perceive there- 
fore that this representation appears again and again in 
every act of thought, but not that it is a constant and per- 
manent intuition, in which thoughts, as being changeable, 
come and go. 

Hence it follows that in the first syllogism of transcen- 
dental psychology reason imposes upon us an apparent 
knowledge only, by representing the constant logical sub- 
ject of thought as the knowledge of the real subject in 
which that knowledge inheres. Of that subject, however, 
we have not and cannot have the slightest knowledge, 
because consciousness is that which alone changes repre- 



286 Transcendental Dialectic 

sentations into thoughts, and in which therefore, as the 
transcendental subject, all our perceptions must be. found. 
Beside this logical meaning of the I, we have no know- 
ledge of the subject in itself, which forms the substratum 
and foundation of it and of all our thoughts. In spite of 
this, the proposition that the soul is a substance may well 
be allowed to stand, if only we see that this concept can- 
not help us on in the least or teach us any of the ordinary 
conclusions of rationalising psychology, as, for [p. 351] 
instance, the everlasting continuance of the soul amid all 
changes and even in death, and that it therefore signifies 
a substance in idea only, and not in reality. 

The Second Paralogism of Simplicity 

Everything, the action of which can never be consid- 
ered as the concurrence of several acting things, is simple. 
Now the Soul, or the thinking I, is such a thing : — 
Therefore, etc. 

Criticism of the Second Paralogism of Transcendental 
Psychology 

This is the strong (yet not invulnerable) syllogism 
among all dialectical syllogisms of pure psychology, not a 
mere sophism contrived by a dogmatist in order to impart 
a certain plausibility to his assertions, but a syllogism 
which seems able to stand the sharpest examination and 
the gravest doubts of the philosopher. It is this : — 

Every composite substance is an aggregate of many 
substances, and the action of something composite, or 
that which is inherent in it as such, is an aggregate of 
many actions or accidents distributed among many sub- 



Transcendental Dialectic 287 

stances. An effect due to the concurrence of many acting 
substances is no doubt possible, if that effect is [p. 352] 
external only (as, for instance, the motion of a body is the 
combined motion of all its parts). The case is different 
however with thoughts, if considered as accidents belong- 
ing to a thinking being within. For suppose it is the 
composite which thinks, then every part of it would 
contain a part of the thought, and all together only the 
whole of it. This however is self-contradictory. For as 
representations, distributed among different beings (like 
the single words of a verse), never make a whole thought 
(a verse), it is impossible that a thought should be inher- 
ent in something composite, as such. Thought therefore 
is possible only in a substance which is not an aggregate 
of many, and therefore absolutely simple. 1 

What is called the nervns probandi in this argument lies 
in the proposition that, in order to constitute a thought, 
the many representations must be comprehended under 
the absolute unity of the thinking subject. Nobody how- 
ever can prove this proposition from concepts. For how 
would he undertake to do it? The proposition [p. 353] 
that a thought can only be the effect of the absolute unity 
of a thinking being, cannot be considered as analytical. 
For the unity of thought, consisting of many representa- 
tions, is collective, and may, so far as mere concepts are 
concerned, refer to the collective unity of all co-operating 
substances (as the movement of a body is the compound 
movement of all its parts) quite as well as to the absolute 
unity of the subject. According to the rule of identity 

1 It would be very easy to give to this argument the ordinary scholastic 
dress. But for my purposes it is sufficient to have clearly exhibited, even in a 
popular form, the ground on which it rests. 



288 Transcendental Dialectic 

it would be impossible therefore to establish the necessity 
of the presupposition of a simple substance, the thought 
being composite. That, on the other hand, such a propo- 
sition might be established synthetically and entirely a 
priori from mere concepts, no one will venture to affirm 
who has once understood the grounds on which the possi- 
bility of synthetical propositions a priori rests, as explained 
by us before. 

It is likewise impossible, however, to derive this neces- 
sary unity of the subject, as the condition of the possi- 
bility of the unity of every thought, from experience. 
For experience never supplies any necessity of thought, 
much less the concept of absolute unity. Whence then 
do we take that proposition on which the whole psycho- 
logical syllogism of reason rests? 

It is manifest that if we wish to represent to ourselves 
a thinking being, we must put ourselves in its place, and 
supplant as it were the object which has to be considered 
by our own subject (which never happens in any [p. 354] 
other kind of investigation). The reason why we postu- 
late for every thought absolute unity of the subject is 
because otherwise we could not say of it, I think (the 
manifold in one representation). For although the whole 
of a thought may be divided and distributed under many 
subjects, the subjective I can never thus be divided and 
distributed, and it is this I which we presuppose in every 
thought. 

As in the former paralogism therefore, so here also, the 
formal proposition of apperception, I think, remains the 
sole ground on which rational psychology ventures to 
undertake the extension of its knowledge. That proposi- 
tion, however, is no experience, but only the form of 



Transcendental Dialectic- 289 

apperception inherent in, and antecedent to, every expe- 
rience, that is a purely subjective conditioii, having refer- 
ence to a possible experience only, but by no means the 
condition of the possibility of the knowledge of objects, 
and by no means necessary to the concept of a thinking 
being in general ; although it must be admitted that we 
cannot represent to ourselves another intelligent being 
without putting ourselves in its place with that formula 
of our consciousness. 

Nor is it true that the simplicity of my self (as a soul) 
is really deduced from the proposition, I think, for it is 
already involved in every thought itself. The proposition 
/ am simple must be considered as the imme- [p. 355] 
diate expression of apperception, and the so-called syllo- 
gism of Cartesius, cogito, ergo sum, is in reality tautological, 
because cogito (sum cogitans) predicates reality immediately. 
/ am simple means no more than that this representation 
of I does not contain the smallest trace of manifoldness, 
but is absolute (although merely logical) unity. 

Thus we see that the famous psychological argument 
is founded merely on the indivisible unity of a representa- 
tion, which only determines the verb with reference to a 
person ; and it is clear that the subject of inherence is 
designated transcendentally only by the I, which accom- 
panies the thought, without our perceiving the smallest 
quality of it, in fact, without our knowing anything about 
it. It signifies a something in general (a transcendental 
subject) the representation of which must no doubt be 
simple, because nothing is determined in it, and nothing- 
can be represented more simple than by the concept of 
a mere something. The simplicity however of the repre- 
sentation of a subject is not therefore a knowledge of the 
u 



290 Transcendental Dialectic 

simplicity of the subject, because no account whatever is 
taken of its qualities when it is designated by the entirely 
empty expression I, an expression that can be applied to 
every thinking subject. 

So much is certain therefore that though I [p. 356] 
always represent by the I an absolute, but only logical, 
unity of the subject (simplicity), I never know thereby 
the real simplicity of my subject. We saw that the propo- 
sition, I am a substance, signified nothing but the mere 
category of which I must not make any use (empirically) 
in concreto. In the same manner, I may well say, I am a 
simple substance, that is, a substance the representation 
of which contains no synthesis of the manifold ; but that 
concept, or that proposition also, teaches us nothing at 
all with reference to myself, as an object of experience, 
because the concept of substance itself is used as a func- 
tion of synthesis only, without any intuition to rest on, 
and therefore without any object, valid with reference to 
the condition of our knowledge only, but not with refer- 
ence to any object of it. We shall test the usefulness of 
this proposition by an experiment. 

Everybody must admit that the assertion of the simple 
nature of the soul can only be of any value in so far as it 
enables me to distinguish the soul from all matter, and 
thus to except it from that decay to which matter is at all 
times subject. It is for that use that our proposition is 
really intended, and it is therefore often expressed by, the 
soul is not corporeal. If then I can show that, [p. 357] 
although we allow to this cardinal proposition of rational 
psychology (as a mere judgment of reason from pure 
categories) all objective validity (everything that thinks 
is simple substance), we cannot make the least use of it, 



Transcendental Dialectic 291 

in order to establish the homogeneousness or non-homo- 
geneousness of soul and matter, this will be the same as 
if I had relegated this supposed psychological truth to 
the field of mere ideas, without any real or objective use. 

We have irrefutably proved in the transcendental ^Es- 
thetic that bodies are mere phenomena of our external 
sense, not things by themselves. We are justified there- 
fore in saying that our thinking subject is not a body, i.e. 
that, because it is represented by us as an object of the 
internal sense, it is, so far as it thinks, no object of our 
external senses, and no phenomenon in space. This 
means the same as that among external phenomena we 
can never have thinking beings as such, or ever see their 
thoughts, their consciousness, their desires, etc., exter- 
nally. All this belongs to the internal sense. This argu- 
ment seems indeed so natural and popular that even the 
commonest understanding has always been led [p. 358] 
to it, the distinction between souls and bodies being of 
very early date. 

But although extension, impermeability, cohesion, and 
motion, in fact everything that the external senses can 
give us, cannot be thoughts, feeling, inclination, and de- 
termination, or contain anything like them, being never 
objects of external intuition, it might be possible, never- 
theless, that that something which forms the foundation 
of external phenomena, and which so affects our sense 
as to produce in it the representations of space, matter, 
form, etc., if considered as a noumenon (or better as a 
transcendental object) might be, at the same time, the 
subject of thinking, although by the manner in which 
it affects our external sense it produces in us no intui- 
tions of representations, will, etc., but only of space and 



2Q2 Transcendental Dialectic 

its determinations. This something, however, is not ex- 
tended, not impermeable, not composite, because such 
predicates concern sensibility only and its intuition, when- 
ever we are affected by these (to us otherwise unknown) 
objects. These expressions, however, do not give us any 
information what kind of object it is, but only that, if 
considered by itself, without reference to the external 
senses, it has no right to these predicates, peculiar to 
external appearance. The predicates of the internal sense, 
on the contrary, such as representation, think- [p. 359] 
ing, etc., are by no means contradictory to it, so that 
really, even if we admit the simplicity of its nature, the 
human soul is by no means sufficiently distinguished from 
matter, so far as its substratum is concerned, if (as it 
ought to be) matter is considered as a phenomenon only. 

If matter were a thing by itself, it would, as a com- 
posite being, be totally different from the soul, as a simple 
being. But what we call matter is an external phenome- 
non only, the substratum of which cannot possibly be 
known by any possible predicates. I can therefore very 
well suppose that that substratum is simple, although in 
the manner in which it affects our senses it produces 
in us the intuition of something extended, and therefore 
composite, so that the substance which, with reference 
to our external sense, possesses extension, might very 
well by itself possess thoughts which can be represented 
consciously by its own internal sense. In such wise the 
same thing which in one respect is called corporeal, would 
in another respect be at the same time a thinking being, 
of which though we cannot see its thoughts, we can yet 
see the signs of them phenomenally. Thus the expres- 
sion that souls only (as a particular class of substances) 



Transcendental Dialectic 293 

think, would have to be dropt, and we should return to 
the common expression that men think, that is, [p. 360] 
that the same thing which, as an external phenomenon, is 
extended, is internally, by itself, a subject, not composite, 
but simple and intelligent. 

But without indulging in such hypotheses, we may 
make this general remark, that if I understand by soul 
a being by itself, the very question would be absurd, 
whether the soul be homogeneous or not with matter 
which is not a thing by itself, but only a class of repre- 
sentations within us ; for so much at all events must be 
clear, that a thing by itself is of a different nature from 
the determinations which constitute its state only. 

If, on the contrary, we compare the thinking I, not with 
matter, but with that object of the intellect that forms the 
foundation of the external phenomena which we call mat- 
ter, then it follows, as we know nothing whatever of the 
matter, that we have no right to say that the soul by 
itself is different from it in any respect. 

The simple consciousness is not therefore a knowledge 
of the simple nature of our subject, so that we might thus 
distinguish the soul from matter, as a composite being. 

If therefore, in the only case where that concept might 
be useful, namely, in comparing myself with objects of 
external experience, it is impossible to determine the 
peculiar and distinguishing characteristics of its nature, 
what is the use, if we pretend to know that the [p. 361] 
thinking I, or the soul (a name for the transcendental 
object of the internal sense), is simple ? Such a propo- 
sition admits of no application to any real object, and can- 
not therefore enlarge our knowledge in the least. 

Thus collapses the whole of rational psychology, with 



2Q4 Transcendental Dialectic 

its fundamental support, and neither here nor elsewhere 
can we hope by means of mere concepts (still less through 
the mere subjective form of all our concepts, that is, 
through our consciousness) and without referring these 
concepts to a possible experience, to extend our know- 
ledge, particularly as even the fundamental concept of a 
simple nature is such that it can never be met with in 
experience, so that no chance remains of arriving at it as 
a concept of objective validity. 



The Third Paralogism of Personality 

Whatever is conscious of the numerical identity of its 
own self at different times, is in so far a person. 
Now the Soul, etc. 
Therefore the Soul is a person. 



Criticism of the Third Paralogism of Transcendental 
Psychology 

Whenever I want to know by experience the numerical 
identity of an external object, I shall have to [p. 362] 
attend to what is permanent in that phenomenon to which, 
as the subject, everything else refers as determination, and 
observe the identity of the former during the time that 
the latter is changing. I myself, however, am an object 
of the internal sense, and all time is but the form of the 
internal sense. I therefore refer each and all of my suc- 
cessive determinations to the numerically identical self; 
and this in all time, that is, in the form of the inner intui- 
tion of myself. From this point of view, the personality 
of the soul should not even be considered as inferred, but 



Transcendental Dialectic 295 

as an entirely identical proposition of self-consciousness in 
time, and that is indeed the reason why it is valid a 
priori. For it really says no more than this : that dur- 
ing the whole time, while I am conscious of myself, I am 
conscious of that time as belonging to the unity of my- 
self ; and it comes to the same thing whether I say that 
this whole time is within me as an individual unity, or 
that I with numerical identity am present in all that 
time. 

In my own consciousness, therefore, the identity of 
person is inevitably present. But if I consider myself 
from the point of view of another person (as an object of 
his external intuition), then that external observer con- 
siders me, first of all, in time, for in the apperception time 
is really represented in me only. Though he admits, 
therefore, the I, which at all times accompanies all rep- 
resentations in my consciousness, and with [p. 363] 
entire identity, he will not yet infer from it the objective 
permanence of myself. For as in that case the time in 
which the observer places me is not the time of my own, 
but of his sensibility, it follows that the identity which is 
connected with my consciousness is not therefore con- 
nected with his, that is, with the external intuition of my 
subject. 

The identity of my consciousness at different times is 
therefore a formal condition only of my thoughts and their 
coherence, and proves in no way the numerical identity of 
my subject, in which, in spite of the logical identity of the 
I, such a change may have passed as to make it impossible 
to retain its identity, though we may still attribute to it 
the same name of I, which in every other state, and even 
in the change of the subject, might yet retain the thought 



296 Transcendental Dialectic 

of the preceding and hand it over to the subsequent 

subject. 1 

Although the teaching of some old schools [p. 364] 
that everything is in a flux, and nothing in the world 
permanent, cannot be admitted, if we admit substances, yet 
it must not be supposed that it can be refuted by the unity 
of self-consciousness. For we ourselves cannot judge from 
our own consciousness whether, as souls, we are perma- 
nent or not, because we reckon as belonging to our own 
identical self that only of which we are conscious, and 
therefore are constrained to admit that, during the whole 
time of which we are conscious, we are one and the same. 
From the point of view of a stranger, however, such a 
judgment would not be valid, because, perceiving in the 
soul no permanent phenomena, except the representation 
of the I, which accompanies and connects them all, we 
cannot determine whether that I (being a mere thought) 
be not in the same state of flux as the other thoughts 
which are chained together by the I. [p. 3 6 5] 

It is curious, however, that the personality and what 
is presupposed by it, namely, the permanence and sub- 
stantiality of the soul, has now to be proved first. For 

1 An elastic ball, which impinges on another in a straight line, communi- 
cates to it its whole motion, and therefore (if we only consider the places in 
space) its whole state. If then, in analogy with such bodies, we admit sub- 
stances of which the one communicates- to the other representations with 
consciousness, we could imagine a whole series of them, in which the first 
communicates its state and its consciousness to the second, the second its own 
state with that of the first substance to a third, and this again all the states 
of the former, together with its own, and a consciousness of them, to another. 
That last substance would be conscious of all the states of the previously 
changed substances, as of its own, because all of them had been transferred 
to it with the consciousness of them; but for all that it would not have been 
the same person in all those states. 



Transcendental Dialectic 297 

if we could presuppose these, there would follow, if not 
the permanence of consciousness, yet the possibility of a 
permanent consciousness in one and the same subject, and 
this is sufficient to establish personality which does not 
cease at once, because its effect is interrupted at the time. 
This permanence, however, is by no means given us 
before the numerical identity of ourself, which we infer 
from identical apperception, but is itself inferred from it, 
so that, according to rule, the concept of substance, which 
alone is empirically useful, would have to follow first upon 
it. But as the identity of person follows by no means 
from the identity of the I, in the consciousness of all 
time in which I perceive myself, it follows that we could 
not have founded upon it the substantiality of the soul. 

Like the concept of substance and of the simple, how- 
ever, the concept' of personality also may remain, so long 
as it is used as transcendental only, that is, as a concept 
of the unity of the subject which is otherwise unknown to 
us, but in the determinations of which there is an uninter- 
rupted connection by apperception. In this sense such a 
concept is necessary for practical purposes and sufficient, 
but we can never pride ourselves on it as helping to ex- 
pand our knowledge of our self by means of [p. 366] 
pure reason, which only deceives us if we imagine that we 
can concluse an uninterrupted continuance of the subject 
from the mere concept of the identical self. That concept 
is only constantly turning round itself in a circle, and does 
not help us as with respect to any question which aims at 
synthetical knowledge. What matter may be as a thing 
by itself (a transcendental object) is entirely unknown to 
us ; though we may observe its permanence as a phenome- 
non, since it is represented as something external. When 



298 Transcendental Dialectic 

however I wish to observe the mere I during the change 
of all representations, I have no other correlative for my 
comparisons but again the I itself, with the general condi- 
tions of my consciousness. I cannot therefore give any 
but tautological answers to all questions, because I put 
my concept and its unity in the place of the qualities that 
belong to me as an object, and thus really take for granted 
what was wished to be known. 



The Fourth Paralogism of Ideality {with Regard to Exter- 
nal Relations) 

That, the existence of which can only be inferred as a 
cause of given perceptions, has a doubtful existence 
only:— [p. 367] 

All external phenomena are such that their existence 
cannot be perceived immediately, but that we can only 
infer them as the cause of given perceptions : — 

Therefore the existence of all objects of the external 
senses is doubtful. This uncertainty I call the ideality of 
external phenomena, and the doctrine of that ideality is 
called idealism ; in comparison with which the other doc- 
trine, which maintains a possible certainty of the objects 
of the external senses, is called dualism. 

Criticism of the Fourth Paralogism of Transcendental 
Psychology 

We shall first have to examine the premisses. We are 
perfectly justified in maintaining that that only which is 
within ourselves can be perceived immediately, and that 
my own existence only can be the object of a mere percep- 
tion. The existence of a real object therefore outside me 



Transcetidental Dialectic 299 

(taking this word in its intellectual meaning) can never be 
given directly in perception, but can only be added in 
thought to the perception, which is a modification of the 
internal sense, and thus inferred as its external cause. 
Hence Cartesius was quite right in limiting all perception, 
in the narrowest sense, to the proposition, I (as a thinking 
being) am. For it must be clear that, as what [p. 368] 
is without is not within me, I cannot find it in my apper- 
ception ; nor hence in any perception which is in reality a 
determination of apperception only. 

In the true sense of the word, therefore, I can never 
perceive external things, but only from my own internal 
perception infer their existence, taking the perception as 
an effect of which something external must be the proxi- 
mate cause. An inference, however, from a given effect 
to a definite cause is always uncertain, because the effect 
may be due to more than one cause. Therefore in refer- 
ring a perception to its cause, it always remains ,doubtful 
whether that cause be internal or external ; whether in fact 
all so-called external perceptions are not a mere play of 
our external sense, or point to real external objects as their 
cause. At all events the existence of the latter is infer- 
ential only, and liable to all the dangers of inferences, 
while the object of the internal sense (I myself with all 
my representations) is perceived immediately, and its 
existence cannot be questioned. 

It must not be supposed, therefore, that an idealist is 
he who denies the existence of external objects of the 
senses ; all he does is to deny that it is known by immedi- 
ate perception, and to infer that we can never [p. 369] 
become perfectly certain of their reality by any experience 
whatsoever. 



300 Transcendental Dialectic 

Before I expose the deceptive illusion of our paralogism, 
let me remark that we must necessarily distinguish two 
kinds of idealism, the transcendental and the empirical. 
Transcendental idealism teaches that all phenomena are 
representations only, not things by themselves, and that 
space and time therefore are only sensuous forms of our 
intuition, not determinations given independently by them- 
selves or conditions of objects, as things by themselves. 
Opposed to this transcendental idealism, is a transcendental 
realism, which considers space and time as something in 
itself (independent of our sensibility). Thus the tran- 
scendental realist represents all external phenomena 
(admitting their reality) as things by themselves, existing 
independently of us and our sensibility, and therefore 
existing outside us also, if regarded according to pure con- 
cepts of the understanding. It is this transcendental 
realist who afterwards acts the empirical idealist, and who, 
after wrongly supposing that the objects of the senses, if 
they are to be external, must have an existence by them- 
selves, and without our senses, yet from this point of view 
considers all our sensuous representations insufficient to 
render certain the reality of their objects. 

The transcendental idealist, on the contrary, [p. 370] 
may well be an empirical realist, or, as he is called, a 
dualist ; that is, he may admit the existence of matter, 
without taking a step beyond mere self-consciousness, 
or admitting more than the certainty of representations 
within me, that is the cogito, ergo sum. For as he con- 
siders matter, and even its internal possibility, as a phe- 
nomenon only, which, if separated from our sensibility, 
is nothing, matter with him is only a class of representa- 
tions (intuition) which are called external, not as if they 



Transcendental Dialectic 301 

referred to objects external by themselves, but because 
they refer perceptions to space, in which everything is 
outside everything else, while space itself is inside us. 

We have declared ourselves from the very beginning 
in favour of this transcendental idealism. In our system, 
therefore, we need not hesitate to admit the existence of 
matter on the testimony of mere self-consciousness, and 
to consider it as established by it (sc. the testimony), in 
the same manner as the existence of myself, as a thinking 
being. I am conscious of my representations, and hence 
they exist as well as I myself, who has these representa- 
tions. External objects, however (bodies), are phenomena 
only, therefore nothing but a class of my representations, 
the objects of which are something by means of these repre- 
sentations only, and apart from them nothing, [p. 371] 
External things, therefore, exist by the same right as I 
myself, both on the immediate testimony of my self-con- 
sciousness, with this difference only, that the representa- 
tion of myself, as a thinking subject, is referred to the 
internal sense only, while the representations which in- 
dicate extended beings are referred to the external sense 
also. With reference to the reality of external objects, I 
need as little trust to inference, as with reference to the 
reality of the object of my internal sense (my thoughts), 
both being nothing but representations, the immediate 
perception (consciousness) of which is at the same time a 
sufficient proof of their reality. 

The transcendental idealist is, therefore, an empirical 
realist, and allows to matter, as a phenomenon, a reality 
which need not be inferred, but may be immediately per- 
ceived. The transcendental realism, on the contrary, is 
necessarily left in doubt, and obliged to give way to 



3<d2 Transcendental Dialectic 

empirical idealism, because it considers the objects of the 
external senses as something different from the senses 
themselves, taking mere phenomena as independent 
beings, existing outside us. And while with the very 
best consciousness of our representation of these things, 
it is far from certain that, if a representation exists, its 
corresponding object must exist also, it is clear that in 
our system external things, that is, matter in all its shapes 
and changes, are nothing but mere phenomena, [p. 372] 
that is, representations within us, of the reality of which 
we are immediately conscious. 

As, so far as I know, all psychologists who believe in 
empirical idealism are transcendental realists, they have 
acted no doubt quite consistently, in ascribing great im- 
portance to empirical idealism, as one of the problems 
from which human reason could hardly extricate itself. 
For indeed, if we consider external phenomena as repre- 
sentations produced inside us by their objects, as existing 
as things by themselves outside us, it is difficult to see 
how their existence could be known otherwise but through 
a syllogism from effect to cause, where it must always 
remain doubtful, whether the cause be within or without 
us. Now we may well admit that something which, taken 
transcendentally, is outside us, may be the cause of our 
external intuitions, but this can never be the object which 
we mean by the representations of matter and material 
things ; for these are phenomena only, that is, certain 
kinds of representations existing always within us, and 
the reality of which depends on our immediate conscious- 
ness, quite as much as the consciousness of my own 
thoughts. The transcendental object is unknown equally 
in regard to internal and external intuition. 



Transcendental Dialectic 303 

Of this, however, we are not speaking at [p. 373 j 
present, but only of the empirical object, which is called 
external, if represented in space, and internal, when repre- 
sented in temporal relations only, both space and time 
being to be met with nowhere except in ourselves. 

The expression, outside us, involves however an inevita- 
ble ambiguity, because it may signify either, something 
which, as a thing by itself, exists apart from us, or what 
belongs to outward appearance only. In order, therefore, 
to remove all uncertainty from that concept, taken in the 
latter meaning (which alone affects the psychological 
question as to the reality of our external intuition) we 
shall distinguish empirically external objects from those 
that may be called so in a transcendental sense, by calling 
the former simply things occurring in space. 

Space and time are no doubt representations a priori, 
which dwell in us as forms of our sensuous intuition, 
before any real object has determined our senses by 
means of sensation, enabling them to represent the ob- 
ject under those sensuous conditions. But this some- 
thing, material or real, that is to be seen in space, 
presupposes necessarily perception, and cannot be fancied 
or produced by means of imagination without that per- 
ception, which indicates the reality of something in space. 
It is sensation, therefore, that indicates reality [p. 374] 
in space and time, according as it is related to the one or 
the other mode of sensuous intuition. If sensation is once 
given (which, if referring to an object in general, and not 
specialising it, is called perception), many an object may 
be put together in imagination from the manifold materials 
of perception, which has no empirical place in space or 
time, but in imagination only. This admits of no doubt, 



304 Transcendental Dialectic 

whether we take the sensations of pain and pleasure, or 
the external ones of colour, heat, etc. ; it is always per- 
ception by which the material for thinking of any objects 
of external intuition must be first supplied. This per- 
ception, therefore (to speak at present of external in- 
tuitions only), represents something real in space. For, 
first, perception is the representation of a reality, while 
space is the representation of a mere possibility of co- 
existence. Secondly, this reality is represented before 
the external sense, that is, in space. Thirdly, space itself 
is nothing but mere representation, so that nothing in it 
can be taken as real, except what is represented in it ; 1 or, 
vice versa, whatever is given in it, that is, what- [p. 375] 
ever is represented in it by perception, is also real in it, 
because, if it were not real in it, that is, given immediately 
by empirical intuition, it could not be created by fancy, the 
real of intuition being unimaginable a priori. 

Thus we see that all external perception proves imme- 
diately something real in space, or rather is that real it- 
self. Empirical realism is therefore perfectly true, that 
is, something real in space always corresponds to our 
external intuitions. Space itself, it is true, with all its 
phenomena, as representations, exists within me only, but 
the real or the material of all objects of intuition is never- 
theless given in that space, independent of all fancy or 

1 We must well master this paradoxical, but quite correct proposition, that 
nothing can be in space, except what is represented in it. For space itself is 
nothing but representation, and whatever is in it must therefore be contained 
in that representation. There is nothing whatever in space, except so far as 
it is really represented in it. That a thing can exist only in the representation 
of it, may no doubt sound strange; but will lose its strangeness if we consider 
that the things with which we have to deal, are not things by themselves, but 
phenomena only, that is, representations. 



Transce?idental Dialectic 305 

imagination ; nay, it is impossible that in that space any- 
thing outside us (in a transcendental sense) could be 
given, because space itself is nothing outside our sensi- 
bility. The strictest idealist, therefore, can never require 
that we should prove that the object without us [p. 376] 
(in its true meaning) corresponds to our perception. For 
granted there are such objects, they could never be repre- 
sented and seen, as outside us, because this presupposes 
space, and the reality in space, as a mere representation, 
is nothing but the perception itself. It thus follows, that 
what is real in external phenomena, is real in perception 
only, and cannot be given in any other way. 

From such perceptions, whether by mere play of fancy 
or by experience, knowledge of objects can be produced, 
and here no doubt deceptive representations may arise, 
without truly corresponding objects, the deception being 
due, either to illusions of imagination (in dreams), or to a 
fault of judgment (the so-called deceptions of the senses). 
In order to escape from these false appearances, one has 
to follow the rule that, whatever is connected according to 
empirical laws with a perception, is real. This kind of 
illusion, however, and its prevention, concerns idealism as 
well as dualism, since it affects the form of experience 
only. In order to refute empirical idealism and its un- 
founded misgivings as to the objective reality of our exter- 
nal perceptions, it is sufficient to consider that exter- 
nal perception proves immediately a reality in space, 
which space, though in itself a mere form of [p. 377] 
representations, possesses nevertheless objective reality 
with respect to all external phenomena (which themselves 
are mere representations only); that without perception,' 
even the creations of fancy and dreams would not be pcs- 
x 



306 Transcendental Dialectic 

sible, so that our external senses, with reference to the 
data from which experience can spring, must have real 
objects corresponding to them in space. 

There are two kinds of idealists, the dogmatic, who 
denies the existence of matter, and the sceptical, who 
doubts it, because he thinks it impossible to prove it. At 
present we have nothing to do with the former, who is an 
idealist, because he imagines he finds contradictions in 
the possibility of matter in general. This is a difficulty 
which we shall have to deal with in the following section 
on dialectical syllogisms, treating of reason in its internal 
struggle with reference to the concepts of the possibility 
of all that belongs to the connection of experience. The 
sceptical idealist, on the contrary, who attacks only the 
ground of our assertion, and declares our conviction of the 
existence of matter, which we founded on immediate per- 
ception, as insufficient, is in reality a benefactor of human 
reason, because he obliges us, even in the smallest matter 
of common experience, to keep our eyes well [p. 378] 
open, and not to consider as a well-earned possession what 
may have come to us by mistake only. We now shall 
learn to understand the great advantage of these idealistic 
objections. They drive us by main force, unless we mean 
to contradict ourselves in our most ordinary propositions, 
to consider all perceptions, whether we call them internal 
or external, as a consciousness only of what affects our 
sensibility, and to look on the external objects of them, 
not as things by themselves, but only as representations 
of which, as of every other representation, we can become 
immediately conscious, and which are called external, 
because they depend on what we call the external sense 
with its intuition of space, space being itself nothing but 



Transcende7ital Dialectic 307 

an internal kind of representation in which certain per- 
ceptions become associated. 

If we were to admit external objects to be things by 
themselves, it would be simply impossible to understand 
how we can arrive at a knowledge of their reality outside 
us, considering that we always depend on representations 
which are inside us. It is surely impossible that we 
should feel outside us, and not inside us, and the whole of 
our self-consciousness cannot give us anything but our 
own determinations. Thus sceptical idealism forces us to 
take refuge in the only place that is left to us, namely, in 
the ideality of all phenomena : the very ideality which, 
though as yet unprepared for its consequences, we estab- 
lished in our own transcendental ^Esthetic. If [p. 379] 
then we ask whether, consequently, dualism only must be 
admitted in psychology, we answer, certainly, but only in 
its empirical acceptation. In the connection of experi- 
ence matter, as the substance of phenomena, is really 
given to the external sense in the same manner as the 
thinking I, likewise as the substance of phenomena, is 
given to the internal sense ; and it is according to the 
rules which this category introduces into the empirical 
connection of our external as well as internal perceptions, 
that phenomena on both sides must be connected among 
themselves. If, on the contrary, as often happens, we 
were to extend the concept of dualism and take it in its 
transcendental acceptation, then neither it, nor on one 
side the pncumatism, or on the other side the materialism, 
which are opposed to dualism, would have the smallest 
foundation ; we should have missed the determination of 
our concepts, and have mistaken the difference in our 
mode of representing objects, which, with regard to what 



308 Transcendental. Dialectic 

they are in themselves, remain always unknown to us, for 
a difference of the things themselves. No doubt I, as 
represented by the internal sense in time, and objects in 
space outside me, are two specifically different phenomena, 
but they are not therefore conceived as different things. 
The transcendental object, which forms the foundation of 
external phenomena, and the other, which forms the 
foundation of our internal intuition, is therefore [p. 380] 
neither matter, nor a thinking being by itself, but simply 
an unknown cause of phenomena which supply to us the 
.empirical concept of both. 

If therefore, as evidently forced to do by this very 
criticism, we remain faithful to the old rule, never to 
push questions beyond where possible experience can 
supply us with an object, we shall never dream of going 
beyond the objects of our senses and asking what they 
may be by themselves, that is, without any reference to 
our senses. But if the psychologist likes to take phe- 
nomena for things by themselves, then, whether he admit 
into his system, as a materialist, matter only, or, as a 
spiritualist, thinking beings only (according to the form 
of our own internal sense), or, as a dualist, both, as things 
existing in themselves, he will always be driven by his 
mistake to invent theories as to how that which is not a 
thing by itself, but a phenomenon only, could exist by itself. 

CONSIDERATION [p. 381] 

on the Whole of Pure Psychology, as affected by these 
Paralogisms 
If we compare the science of the soul, as the physi- 
ology of the internal sense, with the science of the body, 
as a physiology of the objects of external senses, we find, 



Transcendental Dialectic 309 

besides many things which in both must be known empiri- 
cally, this important difference, that in the latter many 
things can be known a priori from the mere concept of 
an extended and impermeable being, while in the former 
nothing can be known a priori and synthetically from 
the concept of a thinking being. The cause is this. 
Though both are phenomena, yet the phenomena of the 
external sense have something permanent, which sug- 
gests a substratum of varying determinations, and conse- 
quently a synthetical concept, namely, that of space, and 
of a phenomenon in space ; while time, the only form 
of our internal intuition, has nothing permanent, and 
makes us to know the change of determinations only, 
but not the determinable object. For in what we call 
soul there is a continuous flux, and nothing permanent, 
except it may be (if people will so have it) the simple 
/, so simple because this representation has no contents, 
consequently nothing manifold, so that it seems to repre- 
sent, or more accurately to indicate, a simple [p. 382] 
object. This I or Ego would have to be an intuition, 
which, being presupposed in all thought (before all experi- 
ence), might as an intuition a priori supply synthetical 
propositions, if it should be possible to get any know- 
ledge by pure reason of the nature of a thinking being 
in general. But this I is neither an intuition nor a 
concept of any object, but the mere form of conscious- 
ness which can accompany both classes of representa- 
tions, and impart to them the character of knowledge, 
provided something else be given in intuition which 
supplies matter for a representation of an object. Thus 
we see that the whole of rational psychology is impossi- 
ble as transcending the powers of human reason, and 



o IO Transcendental Dialectic 

nothing remains to us but to study our soul under the 
guidance of experience, and to keep ourselves within the 
limits of questions which do not go beyond the line 
where the material can be supplied by possible internal 
experience. 

But although rational psychology is of no use in ex- 
tending our knowledge, but as such is made up of paral- 
ogisms only, we cannot deny to it an important negative 
utility, if it does not pretend to be more than a critical 
investigation of our dialectical syllogisms, as framed by 
our common and natural reason. 

What purpose can be served by psychology [p. 383] 
founded on pure principles of reason? Its chief pur- 
pose is meant to be to guard our thinking self against 
the danger of materialism. This purpose however is 
answered, as we have shown, by the concept which rea- 
son gives of our thinking self. For, so far from there 
being any fear lest, if matter be taken away, all thought, 
and even the existence of thinking beings might vanish, 
it has been on the contrary clearly shown that, if we take 
away the thinking subject, the whole material world would 
vanish, because it is nothing but a phenomenon in the 
sensibility of our own subject, and a certain class of its 
representations. 

It is true that I do not know thus this thinking self 
any better according to its qualities, nor can I perceive 
its permanence, or even the independence of its exist- 
ence from the problematical transcendental substratum 
of external phenomena, both being necessarily unknown 
to us. But as it is nevertheless possible that I may 
find reason, from other than purely speculative causes, 
to hope for an independent, and, during every possible 



Transcendental Dialectic 3 1 1 

change of my states, permanently abiding existence of 
my thinking nature, much is gained if, though I freely 
confess my own ignorance, I can nevertheless repel the 
dogmatical attacks of a speculative opponent, [p. 384] 
showing to him that he can never know more of the nat- 
ure of the subject, in order to deny the possibility of 
my expectations, than I can know, in order to cling to 
them. 

Three dialectical questions, which form the real object 
of all rational psychology, are founded on this transcen- 
dental illusion of our psychological concepts, and cannot 
be answered except by means of the considerations in 
which we have just been engaged, namely, (1) the ques- 
tion of the possibility of the association of the soul with 
an organic body, that is, of animality and the state of 
the soul in the life of man ; (2) the question of the be- 
ginning of that association of the soul at the time and 
before the time of our birth ; (3) the question, of the 
end of that association of the soul at and after the 
time of death (immortality). 

What I maintain is, that all the difficulties, which we 
imagine to exist in these questions, and with which, as 
dogmatical objections, people wish to give themselves an 
air of deeper insight into the nature of things than the 
common understanding can ever claim, rest on a mere 
illusion, which leads us to hypostasise what exists in 
thought only, and to accept it in the same quality in 
which it is thought as a real object, outside the think- 
ing subject, taking in fact extension, which is phenomenal 
only, for a quality of external things, existing [p. 385] 
without our sensibility also, and movement as their effect, 
taking place by itself also, and independently of our 



o I2 Transcendental Dialectic 

senses. For matter, the association of which with the 
soul causes so much misgiving, is nothing but a mere 
orm, or a certain mode of representing an unknown 
object by that intuition which we call the external 
sense. There may, therefore, well be something outside 
us to which the phenomenon which we call matter cor- 
responds ; though in its quality of phenomenon it cannot 
be outside us, but merely as a thought within us, although 
that thought represents it through the external sense as 
existing outside us. Matter, therefore, does not signify 
a class of substances totally heterogeneous and different 
from the object of the internal sense (the soul), but only 
the different nature of the phenomenal appearance of 
objects (in themselves unknown to us), the representations 
of which we call external, as compared with those which 
we assign to the internal sense, although, like other 
thoughts, those external representations also belong to 
the thinking subject only. They possess however this 
illusion that, as they represent objects in space, they seem 
to separate themselves from the soul and to move out- 
side it, although even the space, in which they are seen, 
is nothing but a representation of which no homogeneous 
original can ever be found outside the soul. The question 
therefore is no longer as to the possibility of an associa- 
tion of the soul with other known and foreign [p. 386] 
substances outside us, but only as to the connection of 
the representations of the internal sense with the modi- 
fications of our external sensibility, and how these can 
be connected with each other according to constant laws, 
and acquire cohesion in experience. 

So long as we connect internal and external phenomena 
with each other as mere representations in our experience, 



Ti'anscendental Dialectic 313 

there is nothing irrational, nor anything to make the asso- 
ciation of both senses to appear strange. As soon how- 
ever as we hypostatise the external phenomena, looking 
upon them no longer as representations, but as things 
existing by themselves and outside us, with the same qual- 
ity in which they exist inside us, and referring to our own 
thinking subject their acts which they, as phenomena, 
show in their mutual relation, the effective causes outside 
us assume a character which will not harmonise with their 
effects within us, because that character refers to the ex- 
ternal senses only, but the effects to the internal sense, 
both being entirely unhomogeneous, though united in the 
same subject. We then have no other external effects 
but changes of place, and no forces but tendencies, which 
have for their effects relations in space only. Within us, 
on the contrary, those effects are mere thoughts, without 
any relations of space, movement, shape, or local [p. 387] 
determination between them ; and we entirely lose the 
thread of the causes in the effects which ought to show 
themselves in the internal sense. We ought to consider 
therefore that bodies are not objects by themselves which 
are present to us, but a mere appearance of we do not 
know what unknown object, and that movement likewise 
is not the effect of that unknown cause, but only the 
appearance of its influence on our senses. Both are not 
something outside us, but only representation within us, 
and consequently it is not the movement of matter which 
produces representations within us, but that motion itself 
(and matter also, which makes itself known through it) is 
representation only. Our whole self-created difficulty 
turns on this, how and why the representations of our 
sensibility are so connected with each other that those 



314 Transcendental Dialectic 

which we call external intuitions can, according to em- 
pirical laws, be represented as objects outside us ; a ques- 
tion which is entirely free from the imagined difficulty of 
explaining the origin of our representations from totally 
heterogeneous efficient causes, existing outside us, the 
confusion arising from our mistaking the phenomenal ap- 
pearance of an unknown cause for the very cause outside 
us. In judgments in which there is a misapprehension 
confirmed by long habit, it is impossible to bring its cor- 
rection at once to that clearness which can be [p. 388] 
produced in other cases, where no inevitable illusion con- 
fuses our concept. Our attempt therefore at freeing rea- 
son from these sophistical theories can hardly claim as yet 
that perspicuity which would render it perfectly satisfac- 
tory. I hope however to arrive at greater lucidity in the 
following manner. 

All objections may be divided into dogmatical, critical, 
and sceptical. The dogmatical attacks the proposition, the 
critical the proof of a proposition. The former presup- 
poses an insight into the peculiar nature of the object 
in order to be able to assert the contrary of what the 
proposition asserts. It is therefore itself dogmatical, and 
pretends to know the peculiar nature of the object in 
question better than the opponent. The critical objec- 
tion, as it says nothing about the worth or worthlessness 
of the proposition, and attacks the proof only, need not 
know the object itself better, or claim a better knowledge 
of it. All it wants to show is, that a proposition is not 
well grounded, not that it is false. The sceptical objec- 
tion, lastly, places assertion and denial side by side, as 
of equal value, taking one or the other now as dogma, 
and now as denial ; and being thus in appearance dog- 



Transcendental Dialectic 315 

matical on both sides, it renders every judgment [p. 389] 
on the object impossible. Both the dogmatical and scep- 
tical objections must pretend to so much knowledge of 
their object as is necessary in order to assert or deny 
anything about it. The critical objection, on the con- 
trary, wishes only to show that something purely futile 
and fanciful has been used in support of a proposition, 
and thus upsets a theory by depriving it of its pretended 
foundation, without wishing to establish itself anything 
else about the nature of the object. 

According to the ordinary concepts of our reason with 
regard to the association between our thinking subject 
and the things outside us, we are dogmatical, and look 
upon them as real objects, existing independently of our- 
selves, in accordance with a certain transcendental dualism 
which does not reckon external phenomena as representa- 
tions belonging to the subject, but places them, as they 
are given us in sensuous intuition, as objects outside us 
and entirely separated from the thinking subject. This 
mere assumption is the foundation of all theories on the 
association between soul and body. It is never asked 
whether this objective reality of phenomena is absolutely 
true, but it is taken for granted, and the only question 
seems to be, how it is to be explained and understood. 
The three systems which are commonly sug- [p. 390] 
gested, and which in fact are alone possible, are those, 
1st, of pJiysical influence, 2nd, of pre-established harmony, 
and 3rd, of supernatural assistance. 

The second and third explanations of the association 
between soul and matter arise from objections to the first, 
which is that of the ordinary understanding, the objection 
being, that what appears as matter cannot by its imme- 



316 Transcendental Dialectic 

diate influence be the cause of representations, these being 
a totally heterogeneous class of effects. Those who start 
this objection cannot understand by the objects of the 
external senses matter, conceived as phenomenon only, 
and therefore itself a mere representation produced by 
whatever external objects. For in that case they would 
really say that the representations of external objects 
(phenomena) cannot be the external causes of the repre- 
sentations in our mind, which would be a meaningless 
.objection, because nobody would think of taking for an 
external cause what he knows to be a mere representation. 
According to our principles the object of their theory can 
only be, that that which is the true (transcendental) object 
of our external senses cannot be the cause of those repre- 
sentations (phenomena) which we mean by the name of 
matter. As no one has any right to say that he [p. 391] 
knows anything of the transcendental cause of the repre- 
sentations of our external senses, their assertion is entirely 
groundless. And if the pretended reformers of the doc- 
trine of physical influence represent, according to the 
ordinary views of transcendental dualism, matter, as such, 
as a thing by itself (not simply as a mere phenomenal 
appearance of an unknown thing), and then proceed in 
their objections to show that such an external object, 
which shows no causality but that of movements, can 
never be the efficient cause of representations, but that a 
third being must intervene in order to produce, if not 
reciprocal action, at least correspondence and harmony 
between the two, they would really begin their refutation 
by admitting in their dualism the Trpwrov tyev&os of a 
physical influence, and thus refute by their objection, not 
so much the physical influence as their own dualistic 



Transcendental Dialectic 317 

premisses. For all the difficulties with regard to a possi- 
ble connection between a thinking nature and matter 
arise, without exception, from that too readily admitted 
dualistic representation, namely, that matter, as such, is 
not phenomenal, that is, a mere representation of the 
mind to which an unknown object corresponds, but the 
object itself, such as it exists outside us, and independent 
of all sensibility. [p. 392] 

It is impossible, therefore, to start a dogmatical objec- 
tion against the commonly received theory of a physical 
influence. For if the opponent were to say that matter 
and its movements are purely phenomenal and therefore 
mere representations, the only difficulty remaining to him 
would be that the unknown object of our senses could not 
be the cause of our representations, and this he has no 
right to say, because no one is able to determine what an 
unknown object may or may not be able to effect; and, 
according to our former arguments, he must necessarily 
admit this transcendental idealism, unless he wishes to 
hypostasise mere representations and place them outside 
himself as real things. 

What is quite possible, however, is to raise a well- 
founded critical objection to the commonly received opinion 
of a physical influence. For the pretended association 
between two kinds of substances, the one thinking, the 
other extended, rests on a coarse dualism, and changes 
the latter, though they are nothing but representations of 
the thinking subject, into things existing by themselves. 
Thus the misunderstood physical influence may be entirely 
upset by showing that the proof which was to establish it, 
was surreptitiously obtained, and therefore, valueless. 

The notorious problem, therefore, as to a possible asso- 



3 18 Transcendental Dialectic 

ciation between the thinking and the extended, would, 
when all that is purely imaginative is deducted, [p. 393] 
come to this, lioiv external intuition, namely, that of space 
(or what fills space, namely, form and movement), is pos- 
sible in any thinking subject ? To this question, however, 
no human being can return an answer, and instead of 
attempting to fill this gap in our knowledge, all we can do 
is to indicate it by ascribing external phenomena to a 
transcendental object as the cause of this class of repre- 
sentations, but which we shall never know, nor be able to 
form any concept of. In all practical questions we treat 
phenomena as objects by themselves, without troubling 
ourselves about the first cause of their possibility (as 
phenomena). But as soon as we go beyond, the concept 
of a transcendental object becomes inevitable. 

The decision of all the discussions on the state of a 
thinking being, before this association with matter (life) 
or after the ceasing of such association (death), depends 
on the remarks which we have just made on the associa- 
tion between the thinking and the extended. The opinion 
that the thinking subject was able to think before any 
association with bodies, would assume the following form, 
that before the beginning of that kind of sensi- [p. 394] 
bility through which something appears to us in space, the 
same transcendental objects, which in our present state 
appear as bodies, could have been seen in a totally differ- 
ent way. The other opinion that, after the cessation of 
its association with the material world, the soul could 
continue to think, would be expressed as follows : that, if 
that kind of sensibility through which transcendental and, 
for the present, entirely unknown objects appear to us as 
a material world, should cease, it would not follow that 



Transcendental Dialectic 319 

thereby all intuition of them would be removed : it being 
quite possible that the same unknown objects should con- 
tinue to be known by the thinking subject, although no 
longer in the quality of bodies. 

Now it is quite true that no one can produce from spec- 
ulative principles the smallest ground for such an asser- 
tion, or do more than presuppose its possibility, but 
neither can any valid dogmatical objection be raised 
against it. For whoever would attempt to do so, would 
know neither more nor less than I myself, or anybody 
else, about the absolute and internal cause of external and 
material phenomena. As he cannot pretend to know on 
what the reality of external phenomena in our present 
state (in life) really rests, neither can he know that the 
condition of all external intuition, or the thinking subject 
itself, will cease after this state (in death). [p. 395] 

We thus see that all the wrangling about the nature of 
a thinking being, and its association with the material 
world, arises simply from our filling the gap, due to our 
ignorance, with paralogisms of reason, and by changing 
thoughts into things and hypostasising them. On this an 
imaginary science is built up, both by those who assert 
and by those who deny, some pretending to know about 
objects of which no human being has any conception, 
while others make their own representations to be objects, 
all turning round in a constant circle of ambiguities and 
contradictions. Nothing but a sober, strict, and just 
criticism can free us of this dogmatical illusion, which, 
through theories and systems, deceives so many by an 
imaginary happiness. It alone can limit our speculative 
pretensions to the sphere of possible experience, and 
this not by a shallow scoffing at repeated failures or by 



320 Transcendental Dialectic 

pious sighs over the limits of our reason, but by a demar- 
cation made according to well-established principles, writ- 
ing the nihil nlterius with perfect assurance on those 
Herculean columns which Nature herself has erected, in 
order that the voyage of our reason should be continued 
so far only as the continuous shores of experience extend 
— shores which we can never forsake without [p. 396] 
being driven upon a boundless ocean, which, after deceiv- 
ing us again and again, makes us in the end cease all our 
laborious and tedious endeavours as perfectly hopeless. 
******** 

We have yet to give a general and clear investigation of 
the transcendental, and yet natural illusion, produced by 
the paralogisms of pure reason, and the justification of our 
systematical arrangement of them, which ran parallel with 
the table of the categories. We could not have done this 
at the beginning of this section, without running the risk 
of becoming obscure, or inconveniently anticipating our 
arguments. We shall now try to fulfil our duty. 

All illusion may be explained as mistaking the subjec- 
tive condition of thought for the knowledge of the object. 
In the introduction to the transcendental Dialectic, we 
showed that pure reason is occupied exclusively with the 
totality of the synthesis of conditions belonging to any- 
thing conditioned. Now as the dialectical illusion of pure 
reason cannot be an empirical illusion, such as occurs in cer- 
tain empirical kinds of knowledge, it can refer only to the 
conditions of thought in general, so that there can [p. 397] 
only be three cases of the dialectical use of pure reason : — 

1. The synthesis of the conditions of a thought in 
general. 

2. The synthesis of the conditions of empirical thought. 



Transcendental Dialectic 321 

3. The synthesis of the conditions of pure thought. 

In every one of these three cases pure reason is occu- 
pied only with the absolute totality of that synthesis, that 
is, with that condition, which is itself unconditioned. It 
is on this division also that the threefold transcendental 
illusion is founded which leads to three subdivisions of the 
Dialectic, and to as many pretended sciences flowing from 
pure reason, namely, transcendental psychology, cosmol- 
ogy, and theology. We are at present concerned with the 
first only. 

As, in thinking in general, we take no account of the 
relation of our thoughts to any object (whether of the 
senses or of the pure understanding), what is called (1) 
the synthesis of the conditions of a thought in general, is 
not objective at all, but only a synthesis of thought with 
the subject, which synthesis is wrongly taken for the 
synthetical representation of an object. 

It follows from this that the dialectical conclusion as to 
the condition of all thought in general, which condition 
itself is unconditioned, does not involve a fault in its con- 
tents (for it ignores all contents or objects), but only a 
fault in form, and must therefore be called a [p. 398] 
paralogism. 

As, moreover, the only condition which accompanies all 
thought is the /, in the general proposition / think, reason 
has really to deal with this condition, so far as that condi- 
tion is itself unconditioned. It is however a formal con- 
dition only, namely, the logical unity of every thought, no 
account being taken of any object ; but it is represented 
nevertheless as an object which I think, namely, as the I 
itself and its unconditioned unity. 

If I were asked what is the nature of a thing which 

Y 



322 Transcendental Dialectic 

thinks, I could not give any answer a priori, for the 
answer ought to be synthetical, as an analytical answer 
might explain perhaps the meaning of the term " thought," 
but could never add any real knowledge of that on which 
the possibility of thought depends. For a synthetical 
solution, however, we should require intuition, and this 
has been entirely left out of account in the general form 
given to our problem. It is equally impossible to answer 
the general question, what is the nature of a thing which 
is moveable, because in that case the impermeable exten- 
sion (matter) is not given. But although I have no 
answer to return to that question in general, it might 
seem that I could answer it in a special case, namely, in 
the proposition which expresses the self-consciousness, I 
think. For this I is the first subject, i.e. sub- [p. 399] 
stance, it is simple, etc. These, however, ought then to 
be propositions of experience, which nevertheless, without 
a general rule containing the conditions of the possibility 
of thought in general and a priori, could not contain such 
predicates (which are not empirical). This consideration 
makes our knowledge of the nature of a thinking being 
derived from pure concepts, which seemed at first so 
plausible, extremely suspicious, though we have not yet 
discovered the place where the fault really lies. 

A further investigation, however, of the origin of the 
attributes which I predicate of myself as a thinking being 
in general, may help us to discover the fault. They are 
no more than pure categories by which I can never think 
a definite object, but only the unity of the representations 
which is requisite in order to determine an object. With- 
out a previous intuition, no category by itself can give me 
a concept of an object, for by intuition alone the object is 



Transcendental Dialectic 323 

given, which afterwards is thought in accordance with a 
category. In order to declare a thing to be a substance 
in phenomenal appearance, predicates of its intuition must 
first be given to me, in which I may distinguish the per- 
manent from the changeable, and the substratum (the 
thing in itself) from that which is merely inher- [p. 400] 
ent in it. If I call a thing simple as a phenomenon, 
what I mean is that its intuition is a part of phenomenal 
appearance, but cannot itself be divided into parts, etc. 
But if I know something to be simple by a concept only, 
and not by phenomenal appearance, I have really no 
knowledge whatever of the object, but only of my concept 
which I make to myself of something in general, that is 
incapable of any real intuition. I only say that I think 
something as perfectly simple, because I have really noth- 
ing to say of it except that it is something. 

Now the mere apperception (the I) is substance in 
concept, simple in concept, etc., and so far all the psycho- 
logical propositions of which we spoke before are incon- 
testable true. Nevertheless what we really wish to know 
of the soul, becomes by no means known to us in that 
way, because all those predicates are with regard to intui- 
tion non-valid, entailing no consequences with regard to 
objects of experience, and therefore entirely empty. For 
that concept of substance does not teach me that the soul 
continues by itself, or that it is a part of external intui- 
tions, which itself cannot be resolved into parts, and can- 
not therefore arise or perish by any changes of nature. 
These are qualities which would make the soul known to 
us in its connection with experience, and might give us 
an insight into its origin and future state. But [p. 401] 
if I say, by means of the category only, that the soul is 



324 Transcendental Dialectic 

a simple substance, it is clear that the bare rational con- 
cept of substance contains nothing beyond the thought 
that a thing should be represented as a subject in itself, 
without becoming in turn a predicate of anything else. 
Nothing can be deduced from this, with regard to the 
permanence (of the I), nor can the attribute of simplicity 
add that of permanence, nor can we thus learn anything 
whatsoever as to the fate of the soul in the revolutions of 
the world. If anybody could tell us that the soul is a 
simple part of matter, we might, with the help of experi- 
ence, deduce from this the permanence and, on account 
of its simple nature, the indestructibility of the soul. 
But of all this, the concept of the I, in the psychological 
proposition of / think, tells us nothing. 

The reason why that being which thinks within us 
imagines that it knows itself by means of pure categories, 
and especially by that which expresses absolute unity 
under each head, is this. The apperception itself is the 
ground of the possibility of the categories, and these 
represent nothing but the synthesis of the manifold in 
intuition, so far as it has unity in apperception. Self-con- 
sciousness therefore is the representation of that which 
forms the condition of all unity, and is itself uncondi- 
tioned. One may therefore say of the thinking [p. 402] 
I (the soul), which represents itself as substance, simple, 
numerically identical in all time, and as the correlative of 
all existence, from which in fact all other existence must 
be concluded, that it does not know itself through the cate- 
gories, but knows the categories only, and through them 
all objects, in the absolute unity of apperception, that is, 
through itself. It may seem no doubt self-evident that I 
cannot know as an object that which is presupposed in 



Transcendental Dialectic 325 

order to enable me to know an object, and that the deter- 
mining self (thought) differs from the self that is to be 
determined (the thinking subject), like knowledge from its 
object. Nevertheless nothing is more natural or at least 
more tempting than the illusion which makes us look upon 
the unity in the synthesis of thoughts as a perceived unity 
in the subject of thoughts. One might call it the surrep- 
titious admission of an hypostasised consciousness (apper- 
ceptionis substantiatae). 

If we want to have a logical term for the paralogism in 
the dialectical syllogisms of rational psychology, based on 
perfectly correct premisses, it might be called a sophisma 
figurae dictionis. In the major we use the category, with 
reference to its condition, transcendentally only ; in the 
minor and in the conclusion, we use the same category, 
with reference to the soul which is to be compre- [p. 403] 
hended under that condition, empirically. Thus, in the 
paralogism of substantiality, 1 the concept of substance is 
a purely intellectual concept which, without the conditions 
of sensuous intuition, admits of a transcendental use only, 
that is, of no use at all. In the minor, however, we refer 
the same concept to the object of all internal experience, 
though without having previously established the condi- 
tion of its application in concrete?, namely, its permanence. 
We thus are making an empirical, and therefore entirely 
inadmissible use of it. 

Lastly, in order to show the systematical connection of 
all these dialectical propositions of a rationalising psy- 
chology, according to their connection in pure reason, 
and thus to establish their completeness, it should be 

1 Simplicitat was a misprint for stibstantialitat. 



326 Transcendental Dialectic 

remarked that the apperception is carried through all the 
classes of the categories, but only with reference to those 
concepts of the understanding, which in each of them 
formed a foundation of unity for the others in a possible 
perception, namely subsistence, reality, unity (not plu- 
rality), and existence, all of which are here represented by 
reason, as conditions (themselves unconditioned) of the 
possibility of a thinking being. Thus the soul knows in 
itself : — 

I [p. 404] 

The unconditioned unity 

of the relation, 

that is, 

itself, not as inherent, 

but as 

subsisting. 

II III 

The unconditioned unity The unconditioned unity 

of quality, in the manifoldness of time, 

that is, that is, 

not as a real whole, not as at different times 

but as numerically different, 

simple. 1 but as 

one and the same subject. 

IV 

The unconditioned unity 

of existence in space, 

that is, 

not as the consciousness of many things outside it, 

but as the consciousness of the existence of itself only, 

and of other things, merely 

as its representations. 

1 How the simple can again correspond to the category of reality cannot 
yet be explained here ; but will be shown in the following chapter, when 
another use has to be discussed which reason makes of the same concept. 



Transcendental Dialectic 327 

Reason is the faculty of principles. The state- [p. 405] 
ments of pure psychology do not contain empirical predi- 
cates of the soul, but such as, if they exist, are meant to 
determine the object by itself, independent of all experi- 
ence, and therefore by a pure reason only. They ought 
therefore to rest on principles and on general concepts of 
thinking beings. Instead of this we find that a single 
representation, I, 1 governs them all, a representation 
which, for the very reason that it expresses the pure 
formula of all my experience (indefinitely), claims to be a 
general proposition, applicable to all thinking beings, and, 
though single in all respects, has the appearance of an 
absolute unity of the conditions of thought in general, thus 
stretching far beyond the limits of possible experience.] 

1 Ich bin was a mistake, it can only be meant for Ich denke. 



TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 

BOOK II 
CHAPTER II 

THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON 

In the Introduction to this part of our work we showed 
that all the transcendental illusion of pure reason depended 
on three dialectical syllogisms, the outline of which is sup- 
plied to us by logic in the three formal kinds of the ordi- 
nary syllogism, in about the same way in which the logical 
outline of the categories was derived from the [p. 406] 
four functions of all judgments. The Jirst class of these 
rationalising syllogisms aimed at the unconditioned unity 
of the subjective conditions of all representations (of the 
subject or the soul) as corresponding to the categorical syl- 
logisms of reason, the major of which, as the principle, 
asserts the relation of a predicate to a subject. The 
second class of the dialectical arguments will, therefore, 
in analogy with the hypothetical syllogisms, take for its 
object the unconditioned unity of the objective condi- 
tions in phenomenal appearance, while the third class, 
.which has to be treated in the following chapter, will be 
concerned with the unconditioned unity of the objective 
conditions of the possibility of objects in general. 

328 



Transcendental Dialectic 329 

It is strange, however, that a transcendental paralogism 
caused a one-sided illusion only, with regard to our idea of 
the subject of our thought ; and that it is impossible to 
find in mere concepts of reason the slightest excuse for 
maintaining the contrary. All the advantage is on the 
side of pneumatism, although it cannot hide the heredi- 
tary taint by which it evaporates into nought, when sub- 
jected to the ordeal of our critique. 

The case is totally different when we apply reason te 
the objective synthesis of phenomena ; here reason tries at 
first, with great plausibility, to establish its prin- [p. 407] 
ciple of unconditioned unity, but becomes soon entangled 
in so many contradictions, that it must give up its pre- 
tensions with regard to cosmology also. 

For here we are met by a new phenomenon in human 
reason, namely, a perfectly natural Antithetic, which 
is not produced by any artificial efforts, but into which 
reason falls by itself, and inevitably. Reason is n'o doubt 
preserved thereby from the slumber of an imaginary con- 
viction, which is often produced by a purely one-sided 
illusion ; but it is tempted at the same time, either to 
abandon itself to sceptical despair, or to assume a dog- 
matical obstinacy, taking its stand on certain assertions, 
without granting a hearing and doing justice to the argu- 
ments of the opponent. In both cases, a death-blow is 
dealt to sound philosophy, although in the former we 
might speak of the Euthanasia of pure reason. 

Before showing the scenes of discord and confusion 
produced by the conflict of the laws (antinomy) of pure 
reason, we shall have to make a few remarks in order to 
explain and justify the method which we mean to follow 
in the treatment of this subject. I shall call all transcen- 



33<d Transcendental Dialectic 

dental ideas, so far as they relate to the absolute totality 
in the synthesis of phenomena, cosmical concepts, [p. 408] 
partly, because of even this unconditioned totality on 
which the concept of the cosmical universe also rests 
(which is itself an idea only), partly, because they refer 
to the synthesis of phenomena only, which is empirical, 
while the absolute totality in the synthesis of the con- 
ditions of all possible things must produce an ideal of 
pure reason, totally different from the cosmical concept, 
although in a certain sense related to it. As therefore 
the paralogisms of pure reason formed the foundation for 
a dialectical psychology, the antinomy of pure reason will 
place before our eyes the transcendental principles of a 
pretended pure (rational) cosmology, not in order to show 
that it is valid and can be accepted, but, as may be 
guessed from the very name of the antinomy of reason, 
in order to expose it as an idea surrounded by deceptive 
and false appearances, and utterly irreconcileable with 
phenomena. 

THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON 
Section I 

System of Cosmological Ideas 

Before we are able to enumerate these ideas according 
to a principle and with systematic precision, we must bear 
in mind, 

1st, That pure and transcendental concepts arise from 
the understanding only, and that reason does not [p. 409] 
in reality produce any concept, but only frees, it may be, 
the concept of the understanding of the inevitable limita- 



. Transcendental Dialectic 331 

tion of a possible experience, and thus tries to enlarge it, 
beyond the limits of experience, yet in connection with 
it. Reason does this by demanding for something that is 
given as conditioned, absolute totality on the side of the 
conditions (under which the understanding subjects all 
phenomena to the synthetical unity). It thus changes 
the category into a transcendental idea, in order to give 
absolute completeness to the empirical synthesis, by con- 
tinuing it up to the unconditioned (which can never be 
met with in experience, but in the idea only). In doing 
this, reason follows the principle that, if the co7iditioned is 
given, the zvhole sum of conditions, and therefore tJie abso- 
lutely unconditioned must be given likewise, the former being 
impossible without the latter. Hence the transcendental 
ideas are in reality nothing but categories, enlarged till 
they reach the unconditioned, and those ideas must admit 
of being arranged in a table, according to the titles of the 
categories. 

2ndly, Not all categories will lend themselves to this, 
but those only in which the synthesis constitutes a series, 
and a series of subordinated (not of co-ordinated) condi- 
tions. Absolute totality is demanded by reason, [p. 410] 
with regard to an ascending series of conditions only, not 
therefore when we have to deal with a descending line of 
consequences, or with an aggregate of co-ordinated condi- 
tions. For, with reference to something given as condi- 
tioned, conditions are presupposed and considered as given 
with it, while, on the other hand, as consequences do not 
render their conditions possible, but rather presuppose 
them, we need not, in proceeding to the consequences 
(or in descending from any given condition to the condi- 
tioned), trouble ourselves whether the series comes to an 



332 Transcendental Dialectic 

end or not, the question as to their totality being in fact 
no presupposition of reason whatever. 

Thus we necessarily conceive time past up to a given 
moment, as given, even if not determinable by us. But 
with regard to time future, which is not a condition of 
arriving at time present, it is entirely indifferent, if we 
want to conceive the latter, what we may think about 
the former, whether we take it, as coming to an end some- 
where, or as going on to infinity. Let us take the series, 
m, n, o, where n is given as conditioned by ?;/, and at the 
same time as a condition of o. Let that series ascend 
from the conditioned n to its condition m (/, k t i, etc.), 
and descend from the condition ;/ to the conditioned o 
(p, q, r, etc.). I must then presuppose the former series, in 
order to take ;/ as given, and according to reason (the total- 
ity of conditions) n is possible only by means of that series, 
while its possibility depends in no way on the [p. 411] 
subsequent series, o,p, q, r, which therefore cannot be con- 
sidered as given, but only as dabilis, capable of being given. 

I shall call the synthesis of a series on the side of the 
conditions, beginning with the one nearest to a given phe- 
nomenon, and advancing to the more remote conditions, 
regressive; the other, which on the side of the con- 
ditioned advances from the nearest effect to the more 
remote ones, progressive. The former proceeds in ante- 
cedentia, the second in conseque?itia. Cosmological ideas 
therefore, being occupied with the totality of regressive 
synthesis, proceed in antecedentia, not in conseqnentia. If 
the latter should take place, it would be a gratuitous, not 
a necessary problem of pure reason, because for a com- 
plete comprehension of what is given us in experience we 
want to know the causes, but not the effects. 



Transcendental Dialectic 333 

In order to arrange a table of ideas in accordance with 
the table of the categories, we must take, first, the two 
original quanta of all our intuition, time and space. Time 
is in itself a series (and the formal condition of all series), 
and in it, therefore, with reference to any given present, 
we have to distinguish a priori the antecedentia as conditions 
(the past) from the conseqnentia (the future). Hence the 
transcendental idea of the absolute totality of [p. 412] 
the series of conditions of anything conditioned refers to 
time past only. The whole of time past is looked upon, 
according to the idea of reason, as a necessary condition of 
the given moment. With regard to space there is in it 
no difference between progressus and regressus, because all 
its parts exist together and form an aggregate, but no 
series. We can look upon the present moment, with 
reference to time past, as conditioned only, but never as 
condition, because this moment arises only through time 
past (or rather through the passing of antecedent time). 
But as the parts of space are not subordinate to one 
another, but co-ordinate, no part of it is in the condition 
of the possibility of another, nor does it, like time, con- 
stitute a series in itself. Nevertheless the synthesis by 
which we apprehend the many parts of space is successive, 
takes place in time, and contains a series. And as in that 
series of aggregated spaces (as, for instance, of feet in a 
rood) the spaces added to a given space are always the 
cojidition of the limit of the preceding spaces, we ought to 
consider the meas?iring of a space also as a synthesis of a 
series of conditions of something given as conditioned, 
with this difference only, that the side of the [p. 413] 
conditions is by itself not different from the other side 
which comprehends the conditioned, so. that regressus and 



334 Transcendental Dialectic 

progressus seem to be the same in space. As however 
every part of space is limited only, and not given by 
another, we must look upon every limited space as con- 
ditioned also, so far as it presupposes another space as the 
condition of its limit, and so on. With reference to limita- 
tion therefore progressus in space is also rcgrcssus, and 
the transcendental idea of the absolute totality of the 
synthesis in the series of conditions applies to space also. 
I may ask then for the absolute totality of phenomena in 
space, quite as well as in time past, though we must wait 
to see whether an answer is ever possible. 

Secondly, reality in space, that is, matter, is something 
conditioned, the parts of which are its internal conditions, 
and the parts of its parts, its remoter conditions. We 
have therefore here a regressive synthesis the absolute 
totality of which is demanded by reason, but which can- 
not take place except by a complete division, whereby the 
reality of matter dwindles away into nothing, or into that 
at least which is no longer matter, namely, the simple ; 
consequently we have here also a series of conditions, and 
a progress to the unconditioned. 

Thirdly, when we come to the categories of the real 
relation between phenomena, we find that the [p. 414] 
category of substance with its accidents does not lend 
itself to a transcendental idea ; that is, reason has here no 
inducement to proceed regressively to conditions. We 
know that accidents, so far as they inhere in one and the 
same substance, are co-ordinated with each other, and do 
not constitute a series ; and with reference to the sub- 
stance, they are not properly subordinate to it, but are the 
mode of existence of the substance itself. The concept 
of the substantial Vni^ht seem to be here an idea of tran- 



Transcendental Dialectic 335 

cendental reason. This, however, signifies nothing but 
the concept of the object in general, which subsists, so far 
as we think in it the transcendental subject only, without 
any predicates ; and, as we are here speaking only of the 
unconditioned in the series of phenomena, it is clear that 
the substantial cannot be a part of it. The same applies 
to substances in community, which are aggregates only, 
without having an exponent of a series, since they are not 
subordinate to each other, as conditions of their possibil- 
ity, in the same way as spaces were, the limits of which 
can never be determined by itself, but always through 
another space. There remains therefore only the cate- 
gory of causality, which offers a series of causes to a given 
effect, enabling us to ascend from the latter, as the condi- 
tioned, to the former as the. conditions, and thus to answer 
the question of reason. [p. 415] 

Fourthly, the concepts of the possible, the real, and the 
necessary do not lead to any series, except so far as the 
accidental in existence must always be considered as con- 
ditioned, and point, according to a rule of the understand- 
ing, to a condition which makes it necessary to ascend to 
a higher condition, till reason finds at last, only, in the 
totality of that series, the unconditioned necessity which it 
requires. 

If therefore we select those categories which necessa- 
rily imply a series in the synthesis of the manifold, we 
shall have no more than four cosmological ideas, accord- 
to the four titles of the categories. 

I 

Absolute completeness 

of the composition 

of the given whole of all phenomena. 



336 Transcendental Dialectic 



III 



II 

Absolute completeness Absolute completeness 

of the division of the origination 

of a given whole of a phenomenon 

in phenomenal appearance. * n general. 



IV 

Absolute completeness 

of the dependence of the existence 

uice. 

[p. 416] 



of the changeable in phenomenal appearance 



It should be remarked, first, that the idea of absolute 
totality refers to nothing else but the exhibition of phe- 
nomena, and not therefore to the pure concept, formed by 
the understanding, of a totality of things in general. Phe- 
nomena, therefore, are considered here as given, and rea- 
son postulates the absolute completeness of the conditions 
of their possibility, so far as these conditions constitute 
a series, that is, an absolutely (in every respect) complete 
synthesis, whereby phenomena could be exhibited accord- 
ing to the laws of the understanding. 

Secondly, it is in reality the unconditioned alone which 
reason is looking for in the synthesis of conditions, con- 
tinued regressively and serially, as it were a completeness 
in the series of premisses, which taken together require no 
further premisses. This unconditioned is always con- 
tained in the absolute totality of a series, as represented in 
imagination. But this absolutely complete synthesis is 
again an idea only, for it is impossible to know beforehand, 
whether such a synthesis be possible in phenomena. If we 
represent everything by means of pure concepts of the 
understanding only, and without the conditions of sensu- 
ous intuition, we might really say that of everything given 
as conditioned the whole series also of conditions, sub- 



Transcendental Dialectic 337 

ordinated to each other, is given, for the conditioned is 
given through the conditions only. When we come to 
phenomena, however, we find a particular limitation of 
the mode in which conditions are given, namely, [p. 417] 
through the successive synthesis of the manifold of intui- 
tion which should become complete by the regressus. 
Whether this completeness, however, is possible, with 
regard to sensuous phenomena, is still a question. But 
the idea of that completeness is no doubt contained in 
reason, without reference to the possibility or impossibil- 
ity of connecting with it adequate empirical concepts. 
As therefore in the absolute totality of the regressive 
synthesis of the manifold in intuition (according to the 
categories which represent that totality as a series of 
conditions of something given as conditioned) the uncon- 
ditioned is necessarily contained .without attempting to 
determine whether and how such a totality be possible, 
reason here takes the road to start from the .idea of 
totality, though her final aim is the unconditioned, whether 
of the whole series or of a part thereof. 

This unconditioned may be either conceived as existing 
in the whole series only, in which all members without 
exception are conditioned and the whole of them only 
absolutely unconditioned — and in this case the regressus 
is called infinite — or the absolutely unconditioned is only 
a part of the series, the other members being subordinate 
to it, while it is itself conditioned by nothing else. 1 In the 

1 The absolute total of a series of conditions of anything given as con- 
ditioned, is itself always unconditioned; because there are no conditions 
beyond on which it could depend. Such an absolute total of a series is, how- 
ever, an idea only, or rather a problematical concept, the possibility of which 
has to be investigated with reference to the mode in which the unconditioned, 
Z 



338 Transcendental Dialectic 

former case the series is without limits a parte [p. 418] 
priori (without a beginning), that is infinite ; given how- 
ever as a whole in which the regressus is never complete, 
and can therefore be called infinite potentially only. In 
the latter case there is something that stands first in 
the series, which, with reference to time past, is called the 
beginning of the world; with reference to space, the 
limit of the world; with reference to the parts of a lim- 
ited given whole, the simple ; with reference to causes, 
absolute spontaneity (liberty) ; with reference to the exist- 
ence of changeable things, the absolute necessity of nature. 
We have two expressions, world and nature, which fre- 
quently run into each other. The first denotes the math- 
ematical total of all phenomena and the totality of their 
synthesis of large and small in its progress whether by 
composition or division. That world, however, is called 
nature 1 if we look upon it as a dynamical [p. 419] 
whole, and consider not the aggregation in space and 
time, in order to produce a quantity, but the unity in the 
existence of phenomena. In this case the condition of 
that which happens is called cause, the unconditioned 
causality of the cause as phenomenal, liberty, while the 
conditioned causality, in its narrower meaning, is called 
natural cause. That of which the existence is conditioned 

that is, in reality, the transcendental idea with which we are concerned, may 
be contained in it. 

1 Nature, if taken adjective (forma/iter), is meant to express the whole 
complex of the determinations of a thing, according to an inner principle of 
causality; while, if taken substantive (materia/iter), it denotes the totality 
of phenomena, so far as they are all held together by an internal principle of 
causality. In the former meaning we speak of the nature of liquid matter, 
of fire, etc., using the word adjective ; while, if we speak of the objects of 
nature, or of natural objects, we have in our mind the idea of a subsisting 
whole. 



Transcendental Dialectic 339 

is called contingent, that of which it is unconditioned, nec- 
essary. The unconditioned necessity of phenomena may 
be called natural necessity. 

I have called the ideas, which we are at present dis- 
cussing, cosmological, partly because we understand by 
world the totality of all phenomena, our ideas being 
directed to that only which is unconditioned among the 
phenomena; partly, because world, in its transcendental 
meaning, denotes the totality of all existing things, and we 
are concerned only with the completeness of the synthesis 
(although properly only in the regressus to the [p. 420] 
conditions). Considering, therefore, that all these ideas 
are transcendent because, though not transcending in 
kind their object, namely, phenomena, but restricted to 
the world of sense (and excluded from all noumena) they 
nevertheless carry synthesis to a degree which transcends 
all possible experience, they may, according to my opinion, 
very properly be called cosmical concepts. With reference 
to the distinction, however, between the mathematically or 
the dynamically unconditioned at which the regressus aims, 
I might call the two former, in a narrower sense, cosmi- 
cal concepts (macrocosmically or microcosmically) and the 
remaining two transcendent concepts of nature. This dis- 
tinction, though for the present of no great consequence, 
may become important hereafter. 

THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON 

Section II 

Antithetic of Pure Reason 

If every collection of dogmatical doctrines is called 
Thetic, I may denote by Antithetic, not indeed dogmatical 



340 



TranscendcJital Dialectic 



assertions of the opposite, but the conflict between dif- 
ferent kinds of apparently dogmatical knowledge (thesis 
cum antithesi), to none of which we can ascribe [p. 421] 
a superior claim to our assent. This antithetic, therefore, 
has nothing to do with one-sided assertions, but considers 
general knowledge of reason with reference to the con- 
flict only that goes on in it, and its causes. The tran- 
scendental antithetic is in fact an investigation of the 
antinomy of pure reason, its causes and its results. If we 
apply our reason, not only to objects of experience, in 
order to make use of the principles of the understanding, 
but venture to extend it beyond the limit of experience, 
there arise rationalising or sophistical propositions, which 
can neither hope for confirmation nor need fear refutation 
from experience. Every one of them is not only in itself 
free from contradiction, but can point to conditions of its 
necessity in the nature of reason itself, only that, unfortu- 
nately, its opposite can produce equally valid and nec- 
essary grounds for its support. 

The questions which naturally arise in such a Dialectic 
of pure reason are the following. 1. In what propositions 
is pure reason inevitably subject to an antinomy? 2. On 
what causes does this antinomy depend? 3. Whether, and 
in what way, reason may, in spite of this contradiction, 
find a way to certainty ? 

A dialectical proposition of pure reason must have this 
characteristic to distinguish it from all purely sophistical 
propositions, first, that it does not refer to a [p. 422] 
gratuitous question, but to one which human reason in its 
natural progress must necessarily encounter, and, secondly, 
that it, as well as its opposite, carries with itself not a 
merely artificial illusion, which when once seen through 



Transcendental Dialectic 341 

disappears, but a natural and inevitable illusion, which, 
even when it deceives us no longer, always remains, and 
though rendered harmless, cannot be annihilated. 

This dialectical doctrine will not refer to the unity of 
the understanding in concepts of experience, but to the 
unity of reason in mere ideas, the condition of which, 
as it is meant to agree, as a synthesis according to 
rules, with the understanding, and yet at the same 
time, as the absolute unity of that synthesis, with rea- 
son, must either, if it is adequate to the unity of 
reason, be too great for the understanding, or, if ade- 
quate to the understanding, too small for reason. Hence 
a conflict must arise, which cannot be avoided, do what 
we will. 

These apparently rational, but really sophistical asser- 
tions open a dialectical battle-field, where that side always 
obtains the victory which is allowed to make the attack, 
and where those must certainly succumb who [p. 423] 
are obliged to keep on the defensive. Hence doughty 
knights, whether fighting for the good or the bad cause, 
are sure to win their laurels, if only they take care that 
.they have the right to make the last attack, and are 
not obliged to stand a new onslaught of the enemy. We 
can easily imagine that this arena has often been entered, 
and many victories have been won on both sides, the last 
decisive victory being always guarded by the defender of 
the good cause maintaining his place, his opponent being 
forbidden ever to carry arms again. As impartial judges 
we must take no account of whether it be the good or the 
bad cause which the two champions defend. It is best 
to let them fight it out between themselves in the hope 
that, after they have rather tired out than injured each 



3 4 2 Transcendental Dialectic 

other, they may themselves perceive the uselessness of 
their quarrel, and part as good friends. 

This method of watching or even provoking such a 
conflict of assertions, not in order to decide in favour of 
one or the other side, but in order to find out whether the 
object of the struggle be not a mere illusion, which every- 
body tries to grasp in vain, and which never can be of 
any use to any one, even if no resistance were [p. 424] 
made to him, this method, I say, may be called the 
sceptical method. It is totally different from scepticism, 
or that artificial and scientific agnosticism which under- 
mines the foundations of all knowledge, in order if pos- 
sible to leave nothing trustworthy and certain anywhere. 
The sceptical method, on the contrary, aims at certainty, 
because, while watching a contest which on both sides is 
carried on honestly and intelligently, it tries to discover 
the point where the misunderstanding arises, in order to 
do what is done by wise legislators, namely, to derive from 
the embarrassments of judges in law-suits information as 
to what is imperfectly, or not quite accurately, determined 
in their laws. The antinomy which shows itself in the 
application of laws, is, considering our limited wisdom, 
the best criterion of the original legislation (nomothetic), 
and helps to attract the attention of reason, which in 
abstract speculations does not easily become aware of 
its errors, to the important points in the determination 
of its principles. 

This sceptical method is essential in transcendental 
philosophy only, while it may be dispensed with in 
other fields of investigation. It would be absurd in 
mathematics, for no false assertions can there be hidden 
or rendered invisible, because the demonstra- [p. 4 2 5] 



Transcendental Dialectic 343 

tions must always be guided by pure intuition, and pro- 
ceed by evident synthesis. In experimental philosophy 
a doubt, which causes delay, may be useful, but at least 
no misunderstanding is possible that could not be easily 
removed, and the final means for deciding a question, 
whether found sooner or later, must always be supplied 
by experience. Moral philosophy too can always pro- 
duce its principles and their practical consequences in 
the concrete also, or at least in possible experience, and 
thus avoid the misunderstandings inherent in abstraction. 
Transcendental assertions, on the contrary, pretending to 
knowledge far beyond the field of possible experience, 
can never produce their abstract synthesis in any intui- 
tion a priori, nor can their flaws be discovered by means 
of any experience. Transcendental reason, therefore, 
admits of no other criterion but an attempt to combine 
its conflicting assertions, and therefore, previous to this, 
unrestrained conflict between them. This is what we 
shall now attempt to do. 1 

1 The antinomies follow each other, according to the order of the tran- 
scendental ideas mentioned before [p. 335 = p. 415]. 



344 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 
[p. 426] 

THE ANTINOMY 
FIRST CONFLICT OF THE 

Thesis 

The world has a beginning in time, and is limited also 
with regard to space. 

Proof 

For if we assumed that the world had no beginning in 
time, then an eternity must have elapsed up to every given 
point of time, and therefore an infinite series of succes- 
sive states of things must have passed in the world. 
The infinity of a series, however, consists in this, that 
it never can be completed by means of a successive 
synthesis. Hence an infinite past series of worlds is 
impossible, and the beginning of the world a necessary 
condition of its existence. This was what had to be 
proved first. 

With regard to the second, let us assume again the 
opposite. In that case the world would be given as an 
infinite whole of co-existing things. Now we cannot 
conceive in any way the extension of a quantum, which 
is not given within certain limits to every intuition, 1 ex- 
cept through the synthesis of its parts, nor [p. 428] 
the totality of such a quantum in any way, except through 

1 We may perceive an indefinite quantum as a whole, if it is included in 
limits, without having to build up its totality by means of measuring, that is, 
by the successive synthesis of its parts. The limits themselves determine its 
completeness, by cutting off everything beyond. 



Transcendental Dialectic 345 

Antithesis 

OF PURE REASON [p. 427] 

TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS 

Antithesis 

The world has no beginning and no limits in space, but 
is infinite, in respect both to time and space. 

Proof 

For let us assume that it has a beginning. Then, as 
beginning is an existence which is preceded by a time in 
which the thing is not, it would follow that antecedently 
there was a time in which the world was not, that is, an 
empty time. In an empty time, however, it is impossible 
that anything should take its beginning, because of such 
a time no part possesses any condition as to existence 
rather than non-existence, which condition could distin- 
guish that part from any other (whether produced by itself 
or through another cause). Hence, though many a series 
of things may take its beginning in the world, the world 
itself can have no beginning, and in reference to time past 
is infinite. 

With regard to the second, let us assume again the oppo- 
site, namely, that the world is finite and limited in space. 
In that case the world would exist in an empty space with- 
out limits. We should therefore have not only a relation 
of things in space, but also of things to space. As how- 
ever the world is an absolute whole, outside of [p. 429] 
which no object of intuition, and therefore no correlate of 
the world can be found, the relation of the world to empty 



246 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 
a completed synthesis, or by the repeated addition of 
unity to itself. 1 In order therefore to conceive the world, 
which fills all space, as a whole, the successive synthesis 
of the parts of an infinite world would have to be looked 
upon as completed; that is, an infinite time would have 
to be looked upon as elapsed, during the enumeration 
of all co-existing things. This is impossible. Hence an 
infinite aggregate of real things cannot be regarded as 
a given whole, nor, therefore, as given at the same time. 
Hence it follows that the world is not infinite, as regards 
extension in space, but enclosed in limits. This was the 
second that had to be proved. 

[p. 430] OBSERVATIONS ON THE 

I 

On the Thesis 
In exhibiting these conflicting arguments I have not 
tried to avail myself of mere sophisms for the sake of 
what is called special pleading, which takes advantage of 
the want of caution of the opponent, and gladly allows his 
appeal to a misunderstood law, in order to establish his 
own illegitimate claims on its refutation. Every one of 
our proofs has been deduced from the nature of the case, 
and no advantage has been taken of the wrong conclu- 
sions of dogmatists on either side. 

1 The concept of totality is in this case nothing but the representation of 
the completed synthesis of its parts, because, as we cannot deduce the concept 
from the intuition of the whole (this being in this case impossible) , we can 
conceive it only through the synthesis of its parts, up to the completion of the 
infinite, at least in the idea. 



Transcendental Dialectic 347 

Antithesis 
space would be a relation to no object. Such a relation, 
and with it the limitation of the world by empty space, is 
nothing, and therefore the world is not limited with regard 
to space, that is, it is infinite in extension. 1 



FIRST ANTINOMY [p. 431] 

II 

On the Antithesis 

The proof of the infinity of the given series of world, 
and of the totality of the world, rests on this, that in the 

1 Space is merely the form of external intuition (formal intuition) and not 
a real object that can be perceived by external intuition. Space, as prior to 
all things which determine it (fill or limit it), or rather which give an empiri- 
cal intuition determined by its form, is, under the name of absolute space, 
nothing but a mere possibility of external phenomena, so far as they either 
exist already, or can be added to given phenomena. Empirical intuition, 
therefore, is not a compound of phenomena and of space (perception and 
empty intuition). The one is not a correlate of the other in a synthesis, but 
the two are only connected as matter and form in one and the same empirical 
intuition. If we try to separate one from the other, and to place space outside 
all phenomena, we arrive at a number of empty determinations of external 
intuition, which, however, can never be possible perceptions; for instance, 
motion or rest of the world in an infinite empty space, i.e. determination of the 
mutual relation of the two, which can never be perceived, and is therefore 
nothing but the predicate of a mere idea. 



348 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 

I might have apparently proved my thesis too by put- 
ting forward, as is the habit of dogmatists, a wrong 
definition of the infinity of a given quantity. I might 
have said that the quantity is infinite, if no greater quan- 
tity (that is, greater than the number of given units con- 
tained in it) is possible. As no number is the greatest, 
because one or more units can always be added to it, I 
might have argued that an infinite given quantity, and 
therefore also an infinite world (infinite as regards both 
the past series of time and extension in space) is impos- 
sible, and therefore the world limited in space and time. 
I might have done this, but, in that case, my definition 
would not have agreed with the true concept of an infinite 
whole. We do not represent by it how large it is, and 
the concept of it is not therefore the concept of a maxi- 
mum, but we conceive by it its relation only [p. 432] 
to any possible unit, in regard to which it is greater 
than any number. According as this unit is either greater 
or smaller, the infinite would be greater or smaller, while 
infinity, consisting in the relation only to this given unit, 
would always remain the same, although the absolute 
quantity of the whole would not be known by it. This, 
however, does not concern us at present. 

The true transcendental concept of infinity is, that the 
successive synthesis of units in measuring a quantum, can 
never be completed. 1 Hence it follows with perfect cer- 
tainty, that an eternity of real and successive states cannot 
have elapsed up to any given (the present) moment, and 
that the world therefore must have a beginning. 

1 This quantum contains therefore a multitude (of given units) which is 
greater than any number ; this is the mathematical concept of the infinite. 



Transcendental Dialectic 349 

Antithesis 
opposite case an empty time, and likewise an empty space, 
would form the limits of the world. Now I am quite 
aware that people have tried to escape from this conclusion 
by saying that a limit of the world, both in time and space, 
is quite possible, without our having to admit an absolute 
time before the beginning of the world or an absolute 
space outside the real world, which is impossible. I have 
nothing to say against the latter part of this opinion, held 
by the philosophers of the school of Leibniz. Space is 
only the form of external intuition, and not a real object 
that could be perceived externally, nor is it a correlate 
of phenomena, but the form of phenomena themselves. 
Space, therefore, cannot exist absolutely (by itself) as some- 
thing determining the existence of things, because it is 
no object, but only the form of possible objects. Things, 
therefore, as phenomenal, may indeed determine space, 
that is, impart reality to one or other of its predicates 
(quantity and relation); but space, on the other side, as 
something existing by itself, cannot determine the reality 
of things in regard to quantity or form, because it is noth- 
ing real in itself. Space therefore (whether full or empty x ) 
may be limited by phenomena, but phenomena cannot be 
limited by empty space outside them. The same [p. 433] 
applies to time. But, granting all this, it cannot be denied 
that we should be driven to admit these two monsters, 
empty space outside, and empty time before the world, if we 
assumed the limit of the world, whether in space or time. 

1 It is easily seen that what we wish to say is that empty space, so far as 
limited by phenomena, that is, space within the world, does not at least con- 
tradict transcendental principles, and may be admitted, therefore, so far as 
they are concerned, though by this its possibility is not asserted. 



350 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 
With regard to the second part of the thesis, the diffi- 
culty of an endless and yet past series does not exist ; 
for the manifold of a world, infinite in extension, is given 
at one ana 7 the same time. But, in order to conceive the 
totality of such a multitude of things, as we cannot appeal 
to those limits which in intuition produce that totality by 
themselves, we must render an account of our concept, 
which in our case cannot proceed from the whole to the 
determined multitude of the parts, but has to demonstrate 
the possibility of a whole by the successive synthesis of 
the parts. As such a synthesis would constitute a series 
that would never be completed, it is impossible to con- 
ceive a totality either before it, or through it. For the 
concept of totality itself is in this case the representation 
of a completed synthesis of parts, and such a completion, 
and therefore its concept also, is impossible. 



Transce?idental Dialectic 351 

Antithesis 
For as to the plea by which people try to escape from 
the conclusion, that if the world has limits in time or space, 
the infinite void would determine the existence of real 
things, so far as their dimensions are concerned, it is really 
no more than a covered attempt at putting some unknown 
intelligible world in the place of our sensuous world, and an 
existence in general, which presupposes no other condition in 
the world, in the place of a first beginning (an existence 
preceded by a time of non-existence), and boundaries of the 
universe in place of the limits of extension, — thus getting 
rid of time and space. But we have to deal here with the 
mundus phaenomenon and its quantity, and we could not 
ignore the conditions of sensibility, without destroying its 
very essence. The world of sense, if it is limited, lies 
necessarily within the infinite void. If we ignore this, and 
with it, space in general, as an a priori condition of the 
possibility of phenomena, the whole world of sense van- 
ishes, which alone forms the object of our enquiry. The 
mundus intelligibilis is nothing but the general concept of 
any world, which takes no account of any of the conditions 
of intuition, and which therefore admits of no synthetical 
proposition, whether affirmative or negative. 



35 2 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 

[p. 434] THE ANTINOMY 

SECOND CONFLICT OF THE 

Thesis 

Every compound substance in the world consists of 
simple parts, and nothing exists anywhere but the simple, 
or what is composed of it. 

Proof 

For let us assume that compound substances did not 
consist of simple parts, then, if all composition is removed 
in thought, there would be no compound part, and (as no 
simple parts are admitted) no simple part either, that is, 
there would remain nothing, and there would therefore be 
no substance at all. Either, therefore, it is impossible to 
remove all composition in thought, or, after its removal, 
there must remain something that exists without composi- 
tion, that is the simple. In the former case the com- 
pound could not itself consist of substances (because with 
them composition is only an accidental relation of sub- 
stances, which substances, as permanent beings, must 
subsist without it). As this contradicts the [p. 436] 
supposition, there remains only the second view, namely, 
that the substantial compounds in the world consist of 
simple parts. 

It follows as an immediate consequence that all the 
things in the world are simple beings, that their composi- 



Transcendental Dialectic 353 

Antithesis 

OF PURE REASON [p- 435] 

TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS 

Antithesis 

No compound thing in the world consists of simple 
parts, and there exists nowhere in the world anything 
simple. 

Proof 

Assume that a compound thing, a substance, consists of 
simple parts. Then as all external relation, and therefore 
all composition of substances also, is possible in space 
only, it follows that space must consist of as many parts 
as the parts of the compound that occupies the space. 
Space, however, does not consist of simple parts, but 
of spaces. Every part of a compound, therefore, must 
occupy a space. Now the absolutely primary parts of 
every compound are simple. It follows therefore that the 
simple occupies a space. But as everything real, which 
occupies a space, contains a manifold, the parts of which 
are by the side of each other, and which therefore is com- 
pounded, and, as a real compound, compounded not of 
accidents (for these could not exist by the side of each 
other, without a substance), but of substances, it would 
follow that the simple is a substantial compound, which is 
self-contradictory. 

The second proposition of the antithesis, that there 

2A 



354 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 
tion is only an external condition, and that, though we are 
unable to remove these elementary substances from their 
state of composition and isolate them, reason must con- 
ceive them as the first subjects of all composition, and 
therefore, antecedently to it, as simple beings. 



Transcendental Dialectic 355 

Antithesis 
exists nowhere in the world anything simple, is not 
intended to mean more than that the existence [p. 437] 
of the absolutely simple cannot be proved from any ex- 
perience or perception, whether external or internal, and 
that the absolutely simple is a mere idea, the objective 
reality of which can never be shown in any possible expe- 
rience, so that in the explanation of phenomena it is with- 
out any application or object. For, if we assumed that an 
object of this transcendental idea might be found in expe- 
rience, the empirical intuition of some one object would 
have to be such as to contain absolutely nothing manifold 
by the side of each other, and combined to a unity. But 
as, from our not being conscious of such a manifold, we 
cannot form any valid conclusion as to the entire impossi- 
bility of it in any objective intuition, and as without this 
no absolute simplicity can be established, it follows that 
such simplicity cannot be inferred from any perception 
whatsoever. As, therefore, an absolutely simple object can 
never be given in any possible experience, while the world 
of sense must be looked upon as the sum total of all 
possible experience, it follows that nothing simple exists 
in it. 

This second part of the antithesis goes far beyond the 
first, which only banisTied the simple from the intuition of 
the composite, while the second drives it out of the whole 
of nature. Hence we could not attempt to prove it out of 
the concept of any given object of external intuition (of 
the compound), but from its relation to a possible experi- 
ence in general. 



356 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 

[p. 438] OBSERVATIONS ON THE 

I 

On the Thesis 

If I speak of a whole as necessarily consisting of sepa- 
rate parts, I understand by it a substantial whole only, as 
a real compound, that is, that contingent unity of the 
manifold, which, given as separate (at least in thought), is 
brought into a mutual connection, and thus constitutes one 
whole. We ought not to call space a compositum, but a 
totum, because in it its parts are possible only in the 
whole, and not the whole by its parts. It might therefore 
be called a compositum ideale, but not rcale. But this is 
an unnecessary distinction. As space is no compound of 
substances, not even of real accidents, nothing remains of 
it, if I remove all composition in it, not even the point, for 
a point is possible only as the limit of a space, and there- 
fore of a compound. Space and time do not [p. 440] 
therefore consist of simple parts. What belongs only to 
the condition of a substance, even though it possesses 
quantity (as, for instance, change), does not consist of the 
simple ; that is to say, a certain degree of change does not 
arise through the accumulation of many simple changes. 
We can infer the simple from the compound in self-sub- 
sisting objects only. Accidents of a state, however, are 
not self-subsisting. The proof of the necessity of the 
simple, as the component parts of all that is substantially 
composite, can therefore easily be injured, if it is extended 



Transcendental Dialectic 357 

Antithesis 

SECOND ANTINOMY [p. 439] 

II 

On the Antithesis 

Against the theory of the infinite divisibility of matter, 
the proof of which is mathematical only, objections have 
been raised by the Monadists, which become suspicious by 
their declining to admit the clearest mathematical proofs 
as founded on a true insight into the quality of space, so 
far as space is indeed the formal condition of the possi- 
bility of all matter, but treating them only as conclusions 
derived from abstract but arbitrary concepts, which ought 
not to be applied to real things. But how is it possible 
to conceive a different kind of intuition from that given in 
the original intuition of space, and how can its determina- 
tions a priori not apply to everything, since it becomes 
possible only by its filling that space ? If we were to 
listen to them, we should have to admit, beside the 
mathematical point, which is simple, but no part, but 
only the limit of a space, other physical points, simple like- 
wise, but possessing this privilege that, as parts of space, 
they are able, by mere aggregation, to fill space. Without 
repeating here the many clear refutations of this absurd- 
ity, it being quite futile to attempt to reason away by 
purely discursive concepts the evidence of mathematics, I 
only remark, that if philosophy in this case seems to play 
tricks with mathematics, it does so because it [p. 441] 
forgets that in this discussion we are concerned with pJie- 



358 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 
too far, and applied to all compounds without distinction, 
as has often been the case. 

I am, however, speaking here of the simple only so far 
as it is necessarily given in the composite, which can be 
dissolved into the former, as its component parts. The 
true meaning of the word Monas (as used by [p. 442] 
Leibniz) should refer to that simple only, which is given 
immediately as simple substance (for example in self-con- 
sciousness), and not as an clement of the composite, in 
which case it is better called an Atomics} As I wish to 
prove the existence of simple substances, as the elements 
of the composite only, I might call the thesis 2 of the 
second antinomy transcendental Atomistic. But as this 
word has long been used as the name of a particular 
explanation of material phenomena {inolecnlae) and pre- 
supposes, therefore, empirical concepts, it will be better to 
call it the dialectic principle of monadology. 

1 Rosenkranz thinks that atomus is here used intentionally by Kant as a 
masculine, to distinguish it from the atomon, translated by scholastic philos- 
ophers as inseparable, indiscernible, simplex, etc., while with the Greek philos- 
ophers atomus is feminine. Erdman, however, has shown that Kant has 
used atomus elsewhere also as masculine. 

2 Antithesis is a misprint. 



Transcendental Dialectic 359 

Antithesis 
nomena only, and their conditions. Here, however, it is 
not enough to find for the pure concept, produced by the 
understanding, of the composite the concept of the simple, 
but we must find for the intjiition of the composite (matter) 
the intuition of the simple ; and this, according to the laws 
of sensibility, and therefore with reference to the objects 
of the senses, is totally impossible. Though it may be 
true, therefore, with regard to a whole, consisting of sub- 
stances, which is conceived by the pure understanding 
only, that before its composition there must be the simple, 
this does not apply to the totum substantiate phaenomenon 
which, as an empirical intuition in space, carries with it 
the necessary condition that no part of it is simple, because 
no part of space is simple. The monadists, however, have 
been clever enough to try to escape from this difficulty, by 
not admitting space as a condition of the possibility of the 
objects of external intuition (bodies), but by presupposing 
these and the dynamical relation of substances in general 
as the condition of the possibility of space. But we have 
no concept of bodies, except as phenomena, and, as such, 
they presuppose space as the necessary condition of the 
possibility of all external phenomena. The argument of 
the monadists, therefore, is futile, and has been sufficiently 
answered in the transcendental Esthetic. - If the bodies 
were things by themselves, then, and then only, the argu- 
ment of the monadists would be valid. 

The second dialectical assertion possesses this [p. 443] 
peculiarity, that it is opposed by dogmatical assertion 
which, among all sophistical assertions, is the only one 
which undertakes to prove palpably in an object of ex- 
perience the reality of that which we counted before as 



360 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 



Transcendental Dialectic 361 

Antithesis 
belonging only to transcendental ideas, namely, the abso- 
lute simplicity of a substance, — I mean the assertion 
that the object of the internal sense, or the thinking I, 
is an absolutely simple substance. Without entering 
upon this question (as it has been fully discussed before), 
I only remark, that if something is conceived as an object 
only, without adding any synthetical determination of its 
intuition (and this is the case in the bare representation 
of the I), it would no doubt be impossible that anything 
manifold or composite could be perceived in such a rep- 
resentation. Besides, as the predicates through which I 
conceive this object are only intuitions of the internal 
sense, nothing can occur in them to prove a manifold 
(one by the side of another), and therefore a real com- 
position. It follows, therefore, from the nature of self- 
consciousness that, as the thinking subject is at the same 
time its own object, it cannot divide itself (though it might 
divide its inherent determinations) ; for in regard to itself 
every object is absolute unity. Nevertheless, when this 
subject is looked upon externally, as an object of intuition, 
it would most likely exhibit some kind of composition as 
a phenomenon, and it must always be looked upon in this 
light, if we wish to know whether its manifold constituent 
elements are by the side of each other or not. 



362 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 

[p. 444] THE ANTINOMY 

THIRD CONFLICT OF THE 

Thesis 

Causality, according to the laws of nature, is not the 
only causality from which all the phenomena of the 
world can be deduced. In order to account for these 
phenomena it is necessary also to admit another causality, 
that of freedom. 

Proof 

Let us assume that there is no other causality but that 
according to the laws of nature. In that case everything 
that takes place, presupposes an anterior state, on which 
it follows inevitably according to a rule. But that ante- 
rior state must itself be something which has taken place 
(which has come to be in time, and did not exist before), 
because, if it had always existed, its effect too would not 
have only just arisen, but have existed always. The 
causality, therefore, of a cause, through which something 
takes place, is itself an event, which again, according to 
the law of nature, presupposes an anterior state and its 
causality, and this again an anterior state, and so on. 
If, therefore, everything takes place according to mere 
laws of nature, there will always be a second- [p. 446] 
ary only, but never a primary beginning, and therefore 
no completeness of the series, on the side of successive 
causes. But the law of nature consists in this, that 
nothing takes place without a cause sufficiently deter- 



Transcendental Dialectic 363 

Antithesis 

OF PURE REASON [p. 445] 

TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS 

Antithesis 

There is no freedom, but everything in the world takes 
place entirely according to the laws of nature. 

Proof 

If we admit that there is freedom, in the transcendental 
sense, as a particular kind of causality, according to which 
the events in the world could take place, that is a faculty 
of absolutely originating a state, and with it a series of 
consequences, it would follow that not only a series would 
have its absolute beginning through this spontaneity, but 
the determination of that spontaneity itself to produce the 
series, that is, the causality, would have an absolute begin- 
ning, nothing preceding it by which this act is determined 
according to permanent laws. Every beginning of an act, 
however, presupposes a state in which the cause is not yet 
active, and a dynamically primary beginning of an act 
presupposes a state which has no causal connection with 
the preceding state of that cause, that is, in no wise follows 
from it. Transcendental freedom is therefore opposed 
to the law of causality, and represents such a [p. 447] 
connection of successive states of effective causes, that no 
unity of experience is possible with it. It is therefore an 
empty fiction of the mind, and not to be met with in any 
experience. 



364 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 
mined a priori. Therefore the proposition, that all cau- 
sality is possible according to the laws of nature only, 
contradicts itself, if taken in unlimited generality, and it 
is impossible, therefore, to admit that causality as the 
only one. 

We must therefore admit another causality, through 
which something takes place, without its cause being 
further determined according to necessary laws by a pre- 
ceding cause, that is, an absolute spontaneity of causes, by 
which a series of phenomena, proceeding according to 
natural laws, begins by itself; we must consequently 
admit transcendental freedom, without which, even in 
the course of nature, the series of phenomena on the 
side of causes, can never be perfect. 



[p. 448] OBSERVATIONS ON THE 

I 

On the Thesis 

The transcendental idea of freedom is far from forming 

the whole content of the psychological concept of that 

name, which is chiefly empirical, but only that of the 

absolute spontaneity of action, as the real ground of 



Transcendental Dialectic 365 

Antithesis 
We have, therefore, nothing but nature, in which we 
must try to find the connection and order of cosmical 
events. Freedom (independence) from the laws of nature 
is no doubt a deliverance from restraint, but also from the 
guidance of all rules. For we cannot say that, instead of 
the laws of nature, laws of freedom may enter into the 
causality of the course of the world, because, if determined 
by laws, it would not be freedom, but nothing else but 
nature. Nature, therefore, and transcendental freedom 
differ from each other like legality and lawlessness. The 
former, no doubt, imposes upon the understanding the 
difficult task of looking higher and higher for the origin 
of events in the series of causes, because their causality 
is always conditioned. In return for this, however, it 
promises a complete and well-ordered unity of experience ; 
while, on the other side, the fiction of freedom promises, 
no doubt, to the enquiring mind, rest in the chain of 
causes, leading him up to an unconditioned causality, 
which begins to act by itself, but which, as it is blind 
itself, tears the thread of rules by which alone a complete 
and coherent experience is possible. 



THIRD ANTINOMY [p. 449] 

II 

On the Antithesis 

He who stands up for the omnipotence of nature (tran- 
scendental pliysiocracy), in opposition to the doctrine of 
freedom, would defend his position against the sophistical 
conclusions of that doctrine in the following manner. If 



366 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 
imputability ; it is, however, the real stone of offence in 
the eyes of philosophy, which finds its unsurmountable 
difficulties in admitting this kind of unconditioned causal- 
ity. That element in the question of the freedom of the 
will, which has always so much embarrassed speculative 
reason, is therefore in reality transcendental only, and 
refers merely to the question whether we must admit a 
faculty of spontaneously originating a series of successive 
things or states. How such a faculty is possible need not 
be answered, because, with regard to the causality, accord- 
ing to the laws of nature also, we must be satisfied to know 
a priori that such a causality has to be admitted, though 
we can in no wise understand the possibility how, through 
one existence, the existence of another is given, but must 
for that purpose appeal to experience alone. The neces- 
sity of a first beginning of a series of phenomena from 
freedom has been proved so far only as it is necessary in 
order to comprehend an origin of the world, while all suc- 
cessive states may be regarded as a result in succession 
according to mere laws of nature. But as thus [p. 450] 
the faculty of originating a series in time by itself has 
been proved, though by no means understood, it is now 
permitted also to admit, within the course of the world, 
different series, beginning by themselves, with regard to 
their causality, and to attribute to their substances a fac- 
ulty of acting with freedom. But we must not allow our- 
selves to be troubled by a misapprehension, namely that, 
as every successive series in the world can have only a 
relatively primary beginning, some other state of things 
always preceding in the world, therefore no absolutely 
primary beginning of different series is possible in the 



Transcendental Dialectic 367 

Antithesis 
yon do not ad}nit something mathematically the first in the 
world with reference to time, there is no necessity why you 
should look for something dyna?nically the first with refer- 
ence to causality. Who has told you to invent an abso- 
lutely first state of the world, and with it an absolute 
beginning of the gradually progressing series of phenom- 
ena, and to set limits to unlimited nature in order to give 
to your imagination something to rest on ? As substances 
have always existed in the world, or as the unity of expe- 
rience renders at least such a supposition necessary, there 
is no difficulty in assuming that a change of their states, 
that is, a series of their changes, has always existed also, 
so that there is no necessity for looking for a first begin- 
ning either mathematically or dynamically. It is true we 
cannot render the possibility of such an infinite descent 
comprehensible without the first member to which every- 
thing else is subsequent. But, if for this reason you reject 
this riddle of nature, you will feel yourselves constrained 
to reject many synthetical fundamental properties (natural 
forces), which you cannot comprehend any more, nay, the 
very possibility of change in general would be [p. 451] 
full of difficulties. For if you did not know from expe- 
rience that change exists, you would never be able to con- 
ceive a priori how such a constant succession of being and 
not being is possible. 

And, even if the transcendental faculty of freedom 
might somehow be conceded to start the changes of the 
world, such faculty would at all events have to be outside 
the world (though it would always remain a bold assump- 
tion to admit, outside the sum total of all possible intui- 
tions, an object that cannot be given in any possible 



368 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 
course of the world. For we are speaking here of the 
absolutely first beginning, not according to time, but 
according to causality. If, for instance, at this moment 
I rise from my chair with perfect freedom, without the 
necessary determining influence of natural causes, a new 
series has its absolute beginning in this event, with all its 
natural consequences ad infinitum, although, with regard 
to time, this event is only the continuation of a preceding 
series. For this determination and this act do not belong 
to the succession of merely natural effects, nor are they a 
mere continuation of them, but the determining natural 
causes completely stop before it, so far as this event is 
concerned, which no doubt follows them, and does not 
result from them, and may therefore be called an abso- 
lutely first beginning in a series of phenomena, not with 
reference to time, but with reference to causality. 

This requirement of reason to appeal in the series of 
natural causes to a first and free beginning is fully con- 
firmed if we see that, with the exception of the Epicu- 
rean school, all philosophers of antiquity have felt 
themselves obliged to admit, for the sake of explaining 
all cosmical movements, a prime mover, that is, a freely 
acting cause which, first and by itself, started this series 
of states. They did not attempt to make a first be- 
ginning comprehensible by an appeal to nature only. 



Transcendental Dialectic 369 

Antithesis 
experience). But to attribute in the world itself a faculty 
to substances can never be allowed, because in that case 
the connection of phenomena determining each other by 
necessity and according to general laws, which we call 
nature, and with it the test of empirical truth, which dis- 
tinguishes experience from dreams, would almost entirely 
disappear. For by the side of such a lawless faculty of 
freedom, nature could hardly be conceived any longer, 
because the laws of the latter would be constantly 
changed through the influence of the former, and the 
play of phenomena which, according to nature, is regular 
and uniform, would become confused and incoherent. 

2B 



ijq Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 

[p. 452] THE ANTINOMY 

FOURTH CONFLICT OF THE 

Thesis 
There exists an absolutely necessary Being belonging to 
the world, either as a part or as a cause of it. 

Proof 

The world of sense, as the sum total of all phenomena, 
contains a series of changes without which even the 
representation of a series of time, which forms the con- 
dition of the possibility of the world of sense, would 
not be given us. 1 But every change has its condition 
which precedes it in time, and renders it necessary. 
Now, everything that is given as conditional presup- 
poses, with regard to its existence, a complete series of 
conditions, leading up to that which is entirely uncon- 
ditioned, and alone absolutely necessary. Something 
absolutely necessary therefore must exist, if there exists a 
change as its consequence. And this absolutely necessary 
belongs itself to the world of sense. For if we sup- 
posed that it existed outside that world, then the series 
of changes in the world would derive its origin from it, 
while the necessary cause itself would not be- [p. 454] 
long to the world of sense. But this is impossible. For 

1 As formal condition of the possibility of changes, time is no doubt objec- 
tively prior to them (read dissen instead of disser) ; subjectively, however, and 
in the reality of our consciousness the representation of time, like every other, 
is occasioned solely by perceptions. 



Transcendental Dialectic 371 

Antithesis 

OF PURE REASON [p- 453] 

TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS 

Antithesis 
There nowhere exists an absolutely necessary Being, 
either within or without the world, as the cause of it. 

Proof 

If we supposed that the world itself is a necessary 
being, or that a necessary being exists in it, there would 
then be in the series of changes either a beginning, un- 
conditionally necessary, and therefore without a cause, 
which contradicts the dynamical law of the determina- 
tion of all phenomena in time ; or the series itself would 
be without any beginning, and though contingent and con- 
ditioned in all its parts, yet entirely necessary and uncon- 
ditioned as a whole. This would be self-contradictory, 
because the existence of a multitude cannot be necessary, 
if no single part of it possesses necessary existence. 

If we supposed, on the contrary, that there exists an 
absolutely necessary cause of the world, outside the 
world, then that cause, as the highest member [p. 455] 
in the series of causes of cosmical changes, would begin 
the existence of the latter and their series. 1 In that 
case, however, that cause would have to begin to act, and 

1 The word to begin is used in two senses. The first is active when the 
cause begins, or starts (infit), a series of states as its effect. The second is 
passive (or neuter) when the causality begins in the cause itself (fit). I reason 
here from the former to the latter meaning. 



372 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 
as the beginning of a temporal series can be determined 
only by that which precedes it in time, it follows that the 
highest condition of the beginning of a series of changes 
must exist in the time when that series was not yet (be- 
cause the beginning is an existence, preceded by a time in 
which the thing which begins was not yet). Hence the 
causality of the necessary cause of changes and that 
cause itself belong to time and therefore to phenomena 
(in which alone time, as their form, is possible), and it 
cannot therefore be conceived as separated from the 
world of sense, as the sum total of all phenomena. It 
follows, therefore, that something absolutely necessary is 
contained in the world, whether it be the whole cosmical 
series itself, or only a part of it. 



[p. 456] OBSERVATIONS ON THE 

I 

On the Thesis 

In order to prove the existence of a necessary Being, 
I ought not, in this place, to use any but the cosmological 
argument, which ascends from what is conditioned in the 
phenomena to what is unconditioned in concept, that 
being considered as the necessary condition of the abso- 
lute totality of the series. To undertake that proof from 
the mere idea of a Supreme Being belongs to another 
principle of reason, and will have to be treated separately. 

The pure cosmological proof cannot establish the ex- 
istence of a necessary Being, without leaving it open, 



Transcendental Dialectic 373 

Antithesis 
its causality would belong to time, and therefore to the sum 
total of phenomena. It would belong to the world, and 
would therefore not be outside the world, which is contrary 
to our supposition. Therefore, neither in the world, nor 
outside the world (yet in causal connection with it), does 
there exist anywhere an absolutely necessary Being. 



FOURTH ANTINOMY [p. 457] 

II 

On the Antithesis 

If, in ascending the series of phenomena, we imagine 
we meet with difficulties militating against the existence of 
an absolutely necessary supreme cause, such difficulties 
ought not to be derived from mere concepts of the neces- 
sary existence of a thing in general. They ought not to 
be ontological, but ought to arise from the causal connec- 
tion with a series of phenomena for which a condition is 
required which is itself unconditioned, that is, they ought 
to be cosmological, and dependent on empirical laws. It 
must be shown that our ascending in the series of causes 



374 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 
whether that Being be the world itself, or a Being distinct 
from it. In order to settle this question, principles are 
required which are no longer cosmological, and do not 
proceed in the series of phenomena. We should have 
to introduce concepts of contingent beings in general 
(so far as they are considered as objects of the under- 
standing only), and also a principle according to which 
we might connect them, by means of concepts only, with 
a necessary Being. All this belongs to a tran- [p. 458] 
scendent philosophy, for which this is not yet the place. 

If, however, we once begin our proof cosmological ly, 
taking for our foundation the series of phenomena, and 
the regressus in it, according to the empirical laws of 
causality, we cannot afterwards suddenly leave this line 
of argument and pass over to something which does not 
belong as a member to this series. For the condition 
must be taken in the same meaning in which the rela- 
tion of the condition to that condition was taken in the 
series which, by continuous progress, was to lead to that 
highest condition. If therefore that relation is sensuous 
and intended for a possible empirical use of the under- 
standing, the highest condition or cause can close the 
regressus according to the laws of sensibility only, and 
therefore as belonging to that temporal series itself. The 
necessary Being must therefore be regarded as the highest 
member of the cosmical series. 

Nevertheless, certain philosophers have taken the liberty 
of making such a salto (nerdftacns eh aXko ye'vos). From 
the changes in the world they concluded their empirical 
contingency, that is, their dependence on empirically de- 
termining causes, and they thus arrived at an ascend- 



Transcendental Dialectic 375 

Antithesis 
(in the world of sense) can never end with a condition 
empirically unconditioned, and that the cosmological argu- 
ment, based on the contingency of cosmical states, as 
proved by their changes, ends in a verdict against the 
admission of a first cause, absolutely originating the whole 
series 

A curious contrast however meets us in this [p. 459] 
antinomy. From the same ground on which, in the thesis, 
the existence of an original Being was proved, its non- 
existence is proved in the antithesis with equal stringency. 
We were first told, that a necessary Being exists, because 
the whole of time past comprehends the series of all con- 
ditions, and with it also the unconditioned (the necessary). 
We are now told tJiere is no necessary Being, for the very 
reason that the whole of past time comprehends the series 
of all conditions (which therefore altogether are them- 
selves conditioned). The explanation is this. The first 
argument regards only the absolute totality of the series 
of conditions determining each other in time, and thus 
arrives at something unconditioned and necessary. The 
second, on the contrary, regards the contingency of all that 
is determined in the temporal series (everything being pre- 
ceded by a time in which the condition itself must again 
be determined as conditioned), in which case everything 
unconditioned, and every absolute necessity, [p. 461] 
must absolutely vanish. In both, the manner of conclud- 
ing is quite in conformity with ordinary human reason, 
which frequently comes into conflict with itself, from con- 
sidering its object from two different points of view. 
Herr von Mairan considered the controversy between two 
famous astronomers, which arose from a similar difficulty, 



376 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 
ing series of empirical conditions. This was quite right. 
As, however, in this way they could not find a first be- 
ginning, or any highest member, they suddenly left the 
empirical concept of contingency, and took to the pure 
category. This led to a purely intelligible series, the 
completeness of which depended on the existence of an 
absolutely necessary cause, which cause, as no longer 
subject to any sensuous conditions, was freed also from 
the temporal condition of itself beginning its causality. 
Such a proceeding is entirely illegitimate, as may be 
seen from what follows. 

In the pure sense of the category we call contingent 
that the contradictory opposite of which is possible. 
Now we cannot conclude that intelligible contingency 
from empirical contingency. Of what is being [p. 460] 
changed we may say that the opposite (of its state) is 
real, and therefore possible also at another time. But 
this is not the contradictory opposite of the preceding 
state. In order to establish that, it is necessary that, at 
the same time, when the previous state existed, its oppo- 
site could have existed in its place, and this can never 
be concluded from change. A body, for instance, which, 
when in motion, was A, comes to be, when at rest, = non 
A. From the fact that the state opposite to the state A 
follows upon it, we can in no wise conclude that the con- 
tradictory opposite of A is possible, and therefore A con- 
tingent only. In order to establish this, it would be 
necessary to prove that, at the same time when there was 
motion, there might have been, instead of it, rest. But we 
know no more than that, at a subsequent time, such rest 
was real, and therefore possible also. Motion at one 






Transcendental Dialectic 377 

Antithesis 

as to the choice of the true standpoint, as something 
sufficiently important to write a separate treatise on it. 
The one reasoned thus, the moon revolves on its own axis, 
because it always turns the same side towards the earth. 
The other concluded, the moon does not revolve on its own 
axis, because it always turns the same side towards the 
earth. Both conclusions were correct, according to the 
point of view from which one chose to consider the motion 
of the moon. 



378 Transcendental Dialectic 

Thesis 
time, and rest at another, are not contradictory opposites. 
Therefore the succession of opposite determinations, that 
is, change, in no way proves contingency, according to 
the concepts of the pure understanding, and can there- 
fore never lead us on to the existence of a necessary 
Being, according to the pure concepts of the under- 
standing. Change proves empirical contingency only ; 
it proves that the new state could not have taken place 
according to the law of causality by itself, and without a 
cause belonging to a previous time. This cause, even 
if it is considered as absolutely necessary, must, as we 
see, exist in time, and belong to the series of phenomena. 



T?'anscendental Dialectic 379 

THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON [p. 462] 
Section III 

Of the Interest of Reason in these Conflicts 

We have thus watched the whole dialectical play of 
the cosmological ideas, and have seen that they do not 
even admit of any adequate object being supplied to them 
in any possible experience, nay, not even of reason treat- 
ing them in accordance with the general laws of experi- 
ence. Nevertheless these ideas are not arbitrary fictions, 
but reason in the continuous progress of empirical syn- 
thesis is necessarily led on to them, whenever it wants 
to free what, according to the rules of experience, can 
be determined as conditioned only, from all conditions, 
and comprehend it in its unconditioned totality. These 
rationalising or dialectical assertions are so many attempts 
at solving four perfectly natural and inevitable problems 
of reason. There cannot be either more or less of them, 
because there are neither more nor less series of synthet- 
ical hypotheses, which limit empirical synthesis a priori. 

We have represented the brilliant pretensions of reason, 
extending its domain beyond all the limits of experience, 
in dry formulas only, containing nothing but the grounds 
of its claims ; and, as it befits transcendental [p. 463] 
philosophy, divested them of everything empirical, al- 
though it is only in connection with this that the whole 
splendour of the assertions of reason can be fully seen. 
In their application, and in the progressive extension of 
the employment of reason, beginning from the field of 
experience, and gradually soaring up to those sublime 



380 Transcendental Dialectic 

ideas, philosophy displays a grandeur which, if it could 
only establish its pretensions, would leave all other kinds 
of human knowledge far behind, promising to us a safe 
foundation for our highest expectations and hopes for 
the attainment of the highest aims, towards which all 
the exertions of reason must finally converge. The ques- 
tions, whether the world has a beginning and any limit 
of its extension in space ; whether there is anywhere, and 
it may be in my own thinking self, an indivisible and 
indestructible unity, or whether there exists nothing but 
what is divisible and perishable ; whether in my acts I 
am free, or, like other beings, led by the hand of nature 
and of fate ; whether, finally, there exists a supreme 
cause of the world, or whether the objects of nature 
and their order form the last object which we can reach 
in all our speculations, — these are questions for the 
solution of which the mathematician would gladly sacri- 
fice the whole of his science, which cannot give him any 
satisfaction with regard to the highest and dearest as- 
pirations of mankind. Even the true dignity and worth 
of mathematics, that pride of human reason, rest [p. 464] 
on this, that they teach reason how to understand nature 
in what is great and what is small in her, in her order 
and regularity, and likewise in the admirable unity of 
her moving powers, far above all expectations of a philos- 
ophy restricted to common experience, and thus encour- 
age reason to extend its use far beyond experience, nay, 
supply philosophy with the best materials intended to 
support its investigations, so far as their nature admits 
of it, by adequate intuitions. 

Unfortunately for mere speculation (but fortunately 
perhaps for the practical destinies of men), reason, in the 



Transcendental Dialectic 381 

very midst of her highest expectations, finds herself so 
hemmed in by a press of reasons and counter reasons, 
that, as neither her honour nor her safety admit of her 
retreating and becoming an indifferent spectator of what 
might be called a mere passage of arms, still less of her 
commanding peace in a strife in which she is herself 
deeply interested, nothing remains to her but to reflect on 
the origin of this conflict, in order to find out whether it 
may not have arisen from a mere misunderstanding. 
After such an enquiry proud claims would no [p. 465] 
doubt have to be surrendered on both sides, but a per- 
manent and tranquil rule of reason over the understand- 
ing and the senses might then be inaugurated. 

For the present we shall defer this thorough enquiry, 
in order to consider which side we should like to take, if 
it should become necessary to take sides at all. As in 
this case we do not consult the logical test of truth, but 
only our own interest, such an enquiry, though ' settling 
nothing as to the contested rights of both parties, will 
have this advantage, that it makes us understand why 
those who take part in this contest embrace one rather 
than the other side, without being guided by any special 
insight into the subject. It may also explain some other 
things, as, for instance, the zelotic heat of the one and 
the calm assurance of the other party, and why the world 
greets one party with rapturous applause, and entertains 
towards the other an irreconcileable prejudice. 

There is something which in this preliminary enquiry 
determines the right point of view, from which alone it 
can be carried on with proper completeness, and this is 
the comparison of the principles from which both parties 
start. If we look at the propositions of the antithesis, 



382 Transcendental Dialectic 

we shall find in it a perfect uniformity in the mode of 
thought and a complete unity of principle, [p. 466] 
namely, the principle of pure empiricism, not only in the 
explanation of the phenomena of the world, but also in 
the solution of the transcendental ideas of the cosmical 
universe itself. The propositions oi the thesis, on the 
contrary, rest not only on the empirical explanation 
within the series of phenomena, but likewise on intelli- 
gible beginnings, and its maxim is therefore not simple. 
With regard to its essential and distinguishing character- 
istic, I shall call it the dogmatism of pure reason. 

On the side of dogmatism we find in the determination 
of the cosmological ideas, or in the Thesis : — 

First, A certain practical interest, which every right- 
thinking man, if he knows his true interests, will heartily 
share. That the world has a beginning ; that my think- 
ing self is of a simple and therefore indestructible nature ; 
that the same self is free in all his voluntary actions, and 
raised above the compulsion of nature ; that, finally, the 
whole order of things, or the world, derives its origin from 
an original Being, whence everything receives both unity 
and purposeful connection — these are so many foundation 
stones on which morals and religion are built up. The 
antithesis robs us, or seems to rob us, of all these sup- 
ports. 

Secondly, Reason has a certain speculative interest on 
the same side. For, if we take and employ the tran- 
scendental ideas as they are in the thesis, one may quite 
a priori grasp the whole chain of conditions and [p. 467] 
comprehend the derivation of the conditioned by begin- 
ning with the unconditioned. This cannot be done by 
the antithesis, which presents itself in a very unfavourable 



Transcendental Dialectic 383 

light, because it cannot return to the question as to the 
conditions of its synthesis any answer which does not 
lead to constantly new questions. According to it one 
has always to ascend from a given beginning to a higher 
one, every part leads always to a still smaller part, every 
event has always before it another event as its cause, 
and the conditions of existence in general always rest 
on others, without ever receiving unconditioned strength 
and support from a self-subsisting thing, as the original 
Being. 

Thi?'dly, This side has also the advantage of popularity, 
which is by no means its smallest recommendation. The 
common understanding does not see the smallest difficulty 
in the idea of the unconditioned beginning of all synthesis, 
being accustomed rather to descend to consequences, than 
to ascend to causes. It finds comfort in the ideas of the 
absolutely first (the possibility of which does not trouble 
it), and at the same time a firm point to which the leading 
strings of its life may be attached, while there is no pleas- 
ure in a restless ascent from condition to condition, and 
keeping one foot always in the air. 

On the side of empiricism, so far as it deter- [p. 468] 
mines the cosmological ideas, or the antithesis, there 
is : — 

First y No such practical interest, arising from the pure 
principles of reason, as morality and religion possess. 
On the contrary, empiricism seems to deprive both of 
their power and influence. If there is no original Being, 
different from the world ; if the world is without a be- 
ginning, and therefore without a Creator ; if our will is 
not free, and our soul shares the same divisibility and 
perishableness with matter, moral ideas also and principles 



384 Transcendental Dialectic 

lose all validity, and fall with the transcendental ideas, 
which formed their theoretic support. 

But, on the other side, empiricism offers advantages 
to the speculative interests of reason, which are very 
tempting, and far exceed those which the dogmatical 
teacher can promise. With the empiricist the under- 
standing is always on its own proper ground, namely, 
the field of all possible experience, the laws of which 
may be investigated and serve to enlarge certain and 
intelligible knowledge without end. Here every object 
can and ought to be represented to intuition, both in 
itself and in its relations, or at least in concepts, the 
images of which can be clearly and distinctly represented 
in given similar intuitions. Not only is there no necessity 
for leaving the chain of the order of nature in order to lay 
hold of ideas, the objects of which are not known, [p. 469] 
because, as mere products of thought, they can never be 
given, but the understanding is not even allowed to leave 
its proper business and, under pretence of its being finished, 
to cross into the domain of idealising reason and transcen- 
dental concepts, where it need no longer observe and in- 
vestigate according to the laws of nature, but only think and 
dream, without any risk of being contradicted by the facts 
of nature, not being bound by their evidence, but justified 
in passing them by, or in even subordinating them to a 
higher authority, namely, that of pure reason. 

" Hence the empiricist will never allow that any epoch of 
nature should be considered as the absolutely first, or any 
limit of his vision into the extent of nature should be con-, 
sidered as the last. He will not approve of a transition 
from the objects of nature, which he can analyse by 

observation and mathematics and determine synthetically 



Transcendental Dialectic 385 

in intuition (the extended), to those which neither sense 
nor imagination can ever represent in concrete- (the sim- 
ple) ; nor will he concede that a faculty be presupposed, 
even in nature, to act independent of the laws of nature 
(freedom), thus narrowing the operations of the under- 
standing in investigating, according to the necessary 
rules, the origin of phenomena. Lastly, he will never 
tolerate that the cause of anything should be [p. 470] 
looked for anywhere outside of nature (in the original 
Being), because we know nothing but nature, which alone 
can offer us objects and instruct us as to their laws. 

If the empirical philosopher had no other purpose with 
his antithesis but to put down the rashness and presump- 
tion of reason in mistaking her true purpose, while boasting 
of insight and knowledge, where insight and knowledge 
come to an end, nay, while representing, what might have 
been allowed to pass on account of practical interests, 
as a real advancement of speculative enquiry, in order, 
when it is so disposed, either to tear the thread of physical 
enquiry, or to fasten it, under the pretence of enlarging 
our knowledge, to those transcendental ideas, which really 
teach us only that we know nothing ; if, I say, the em- 
piricist were satisfied with this, then his principle would 
only serve to teach moderation in claims, modesty in 
assertions, and encourage the greatest possible enlarge- 
ment of our understanding through the true teacher 
given to us, namely, experience. For in such a case we 
should not be deprived of our own intellectual presump- 
tions or of our faith in their influence on our practical 
interests. They would only have lost the pompous titles 
of science and rational insight, because true [p. 471] 
speculative knoivlcdge can never have any other object 



386 Transcendental Dialectic 

but experience; and, if we transcend its limits, our syn- 
thesis, which attempts new kinds of knowledge indepen- 
dent of experience, lacks that substratum of intuition to 
which alone it could be applied. 

As it is, empiricism becomes often itself dogmatical 
with regard to ideas, and boldly denies what goes beyond 
the sphere of its intuitive knowledge, and thus becomes 
guilty itself of a want of modesty, which here is all the 
more reprehensible, because an irreparable injury is 
thereby inflicted on the practical interests of reason. 

This constitutes the opposition of Epicureanism l to 
Platonism. 

Either party says more than it knows ; but, [p. 472] 
while the former encourages and advances knowledge, 
although at the expense of practical interests, the latter 
supplies excellent practical principles, but with regard to 
everything of which speculative knowledge is open to us, 
it allows reason to indulge in ideal explanations of natural 
phenomena and to neglect physical investigation. 

With regard to the third point which has to be con- 

1 It is, however, doubtful whether Epicurus did ever teach these principles 
as objective assertions. If he meant them to be no more than maxims for the 
speculative use of reason, he would have shown thereby a truer philosophical 
spirit than any of the philosophers on antiquity. The principles that in ex- 
plaining phenomena we must proceed as if the field of investigation were 
enclosed by no limit or beginning of the world; that the material of the world 
should be accepted as it must be, if we want to learn anything about it from 
experience ; that there is no origination of events except as determined by 
invariable laws of nature; and, lastly, that we must not appeal to a cause 
distinct from the world, all these are still perfectly true, though seldom ob- 
served in enlarging the field of speculative philosophy, or in discovering the 
principles of morality, independently of foreign aid. It is not permissible 
that those who wish only to ignore those dogmatical propositions, while 
still engaged in mere speculation, should be accused of wishing to deny 
them. 



Transcendental Dialectic 387 

sidered in a preliminary choice between the two opposite 
parties, it is very strange that empiricism should be so 
unpopular, though it might be supposed that the common 
understanding would readily accept a theory which prom- 
ises to satisfy it by experimental knowledge and its ra- 
tional connection, while transcendental dogmatism forces 
it to ascend to concepts which far surpass the insight 
and rational faculties of the most practised thinkers. But 
here is the real motive; — the man of ordinary [p. 473] 
understanding is so placed thereby that even the most 
learned can claim no advantage over him. If he knows little 
or nothing, no one can boast of knowing much more, and 
though he may not be able to employ such scholastic terms 
as others, he can argue and subtilise infinitely more, because 
he moves about among mere ideas, about which it is easy 
to be eloquent, because no one knows anything about them. 
The same person would have to be entirely silent, or 
would have to confess his ignorance with regard to sci- 
entific enquiries into nature. Indolence, therefore, and 
vanity are strongly in favour of those principles. Besides, 
although a true philosopher finds it extremely hard to 
accept the principle of which he can give no reasonable 
account, still more to introduce concepts the objective 
reality of which cannot be established, nothing comes 
more natural to the common understanding that wants 
something with which it can operate securely. The 
difficulty of comprehending such a supposition does not 
disquiet a person of common understanding, because not 
knowing what comprehending really means, it never enters 
into his mind, and he takes everything for known that has 
become familiar to him by frequent use. At last all specu- 
lative interest disappears before the practical, and he 



388 Transcendental Dialectic 

imagines that he understands and knows what his fears 
and hopes impel him to accept or to believe. Thus the 
empiricism of a transcendcntally idealising reason [p. 474] 
loses all popularity and, however prejudicial it may be to 
the highest practical principles, there is no reason to fear 
that it will ever pass the limits of the school and obtain 
in the commonwealth any considerable authority, or any 
favour with the multitude. 

Human reason is by its nature architectonic, and looks 
upon all knowledge as belonging to a possible system. 
It therefore allows such principles only which do not 
render existing knowledge incapable of being associated 
with other knowledge in some kind of system. The 
propositions of the antithesis, however, are of such a 
character that they render the completion of any system 
of knowledge quite impossible. According to them there 
is always beyond every state of the world, an older state ; 
in every part, other and again divisible parts ; before every 
event, another event which again is produced from else- 
where, and everything in existence is conditioned, without 
an unconditioned and first existence anywhere. As there- 
fore the antithesis allows of nothing that is first, and of 
no beginning which could serve as the foundation of an 
edifice, such an edifice of knowledge is entirely impossible 
with such premisses. Hence the architectonic interest of 
reason (which demands not empirical, but pure [p. 475] 
rational unity a priori) serves as a natural recommendation 
of the propositions of the thesis. 

But if men could free themselves from all such interests, 
and consider the assertions of reason, unconcerned about 
their consequences, according to the value of their argu- 
ments only, they would find themselves, if they knew of 



Transcendental Dialectic 389 

no escape from the press except adhesion to one or the 
other of the opposite doctrines, in a state of constant 
oscillation. To-day they would be convinced that the 
human will is free ; to-morrow, when considering the 
indissoluble chain of nature, they would think that free- 
dom is nothing but self-deception, and nature all in all. 
When afterwards they come to act, this play of purely 
speculative reason would vanish like the shadows of a 
dream, and they would choose their principles according 
to practical interests only. But, as it well befits a reflect- 
ing and enquiring being to devote a certain time entirely 
to the examination of his own reason, divesting himself of 
all partiality, and then to publish his observations for the 
judgment of others, no one ought to be blamed, still less 
be prevented, if he wishes to produce the thesis [p. 476] 
as well as the antithesis, so that they may defend them- 
selves, terrified by no menace, before a jury of his peers, 
that is, before a jury of weak mortals. 

THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON 
Section IV 

Of the Transcendental Problems of Pure Reason, and the 
Absolute Necessity of their Solution 

To attempt to solve all problems, and answer all ques- 
tions, would be impudent boasting, and so extravagant a 
self-conceit, that it would forfeit all confidence. Never- 
theless there are sciences the very nature of which requires 
that every question which can occur in them should be 
answerable at once from what is known, because the 
answer must arise from the same sources from which the 



3QO 



Transcendental Dialectic 



question springs. Here it is not allowed to plead inevita- 
ble ignorance, but a solution can be demanded. \\V must 
be able, for instance, to know, according to a rule, what in 
every possible case is right or wrong because this touches 
our obligation, and we cannot have any obligation to that 
which we cannot know. In the explanation, [p. 477] 
however, of the phenomena of nature, many things must 
remain uncertain, and many a question insoluble, because 
what we know of nature is by no means sufficient, in all 
cases, to explain what has to be explained. It has now to 
be considered, whether there exists in transcendental phi- 
losophy any question relating to any object of reason 
which, by that pure reason, is unanswerable, and whether 
we have a right to decline its decisive answer by treating 
the object as absolutely uncertain (from all that we are 
able to know), and as belonging to that class of objects of 
which we may form a sufficient conception for starting a 
question, without having the power or means of ever 
answering it. 

/ Now I maintain that transcendental philosophy has this 
peculiarity among all speculative knowledge, that no ques- 
tion, referring to an object of pure reason, can be insoluble 
for the same human reason ; and that no excuse of inevita- 
ble ignorance on our side, or of unfathomable depth on 
the side of the problem, can release us from the obligation 
to answer it thoroughly and completely ; because the same 
concept, which enables us to ask the question, must 
qualify us to answer it, considering that, as in the case 
of right and wrong, the object itself does not exist, except 
in the concept. 

There are, however, in transcendental philoso- [p. 478] 
phy no other questions but the cosmological, with regard 



Transcendental Dialectic 391 

to which we have a right to demand a satisfactory answer, 
touching the quality of the object ; nor is the philosopher 
allowed here to decline an answer by pleading impenetra- 
ble obscurity. These questions can refer to cosmological 
ideas only, because the object must be given empirically, 
and the question only refers to the adequateness of it to 
an idea. If the object is transcendental and therefore 
itself unknown, as, for instance, whether that something 
the phenomenal appearance of which (within ourselves) is 
the thinking (soul), be in itself a simple being, whether 
there be an absolutely necessary cause of all things, etc., 
we are asked to find an object for our idea of which we 
may well confess that it is unknown to us, though not 
therefore impossible. 1 The cosmological ideas alone pos- 
sess this peculiarity that they may presuppose [p. 479] 
their object, and the empirical synthesis required for the 
object, as given, and the question which they suggest 
refers only to the progress of that synthesis, so far as it is 
to contain absolute totality, such absolute totality being 
no longer empirical, because it cannot be given in any 
experience. As we are here concerned solely with a 
thing, as an object of possible experience, not as a thing 

1 Though we cannot answer the question, what kind of quality a transcen- 
dental object may possess, or what it is, we are well able to answer that the 
question itself is nothing, because it is without an object. All questions, there- 
fore, of transcendental psychology are answerable, and have been answered, 
for they refer to the transcendental subject of all internal phenomena, which 
itself is not phenomenal, and not given as an object, and possesses none of the 
conditions which make any of the categories (and it is to them that the ques- 
tion really refers) applicable to it. We have, therefore, here a case where the 
common saying applies, that no answer is as good as an answer, that is, that 
the question regarding the quality of something which cannot be conceived 
by any definite predicates, being completely beyond the sphere of objects, is 
entirely null and void. 



■5Q2 Transcendental Dialectic 

by itself, it is impossible that the answer of the transcen- 
dent cosmological question can be anywhere but in the 
idea, because it refers to no object by itself; and in 
respect to possible experience we do not ask for that 
which can be given in cone re to in any experience, but for 
that which lies in the idea, to which the empirical synthe- 
sis can no more than approach. Hence that question can 
be solved from the idea only, and being a mere creation of 
reason, reason cannot decline her responsibility and put it 
on the unknown object. 

It is in reality not so strange as it may seem [p. 480] 
at first, that a science should demand and expect definite 
answers to all the questions belonging to it (quaestiones 
domesticae), although at present these answers have not 
yet been discovered. There are, in addition to transcen- 
dental philosophy, two other sciences of pure reason, the 
one speculative, the other practical, pure mathematics^ and 
pure ctliics. Has it ever been alleged that, it may be on 
account of our necessary ignorance of the conditions, it 
must remain uncertain what exact relation the diameter 
bears to a circle, in rational or irrational numbers? As 
by the former the relation cannot be expressed ade- 
quately, and by the latter has not yet been discovered, 
it was judged rightly that the impossibility at least of 
the solution of such a problem can be known with cer- 
tainty, and Lambert gave even a demonstration of this. 
In the general principles of morality there can be noth- 
ing uncertain, because its maxims are either entirely null 
and void, or derived from our own rational concepts only. 
In natural science, on the contrary, we have an infinity 
of conjectures with regard to which certainty can never 
be expected, because natural phenomena are objects given 



Transcendental Dialectic 393 

to us independent of our concepts, and the key to them 
cannot be found within our own mind, but in the world 
outside us. For that reason it cannot in many cases 
be found at all, and a satisfactory answer must not be 
expected. The questions of the transcendental [p. 481] 
Analytic, referring to the deduction of our pure know- 
ledge, do not belong to this class, because we are treating 
at present of the certainty of judgments with reference 
to their objects only, and not with reference to the origin 
of our concepts themselves. 

We shall not, therefore, be justified in evading the obli- 
gation of a critical solution, at least of the questions of 
reason, by complaints on the narrow limits of our reason, 
and by confessing, under the veil of humble self-know- 
ledge, that it goes beyond the powers of our reason to 
determine whether the world has existed from eternity, 
or has had a beginning ; whether cosmical space is filled 
with beings ad infinitum, or enclosed within certain 
limits ; whether anything in the world is simple, or 
everything can be infinitely divided ; lastly, whether there 
is a Being entirely unconditioned and necessary in itself, 
or whether the existence of everything is conditioned, 
and therefore externally dependent, and in itself contin- 
gent. For all these questions refer to an object which 
can be found nowhere except in our own thoughts, 
namely, the absolutely unconditioned totality of the syn- 
thesis of phenomena. If we are not able to say and 
establish anything certain about this from our own con- 
cepts, we must not throw the blame on the [p. 482] 
object itself as obscure, because such an object (being 
nowhere to be found, except in our ideas) can never be 
given to us ; but we must look for the real cause of 



394 



Transcendental Dialectic 



obscurity in our idea itself, which is a problem admit- 
ting of no solution, though we insist obstinately that a 
real object must correspond to it. A clear explanation 
of the dialectic within our own concept, would soon show 
us, with perfect certainty, how we ought to judge with 
reference to such a question. 

If people put forward a pretext of being unable to 
arrive at certainty with regard to these problems, the 
first question which we ought to address to them, and 
which they ought to answer clearly, is this, Whence do 
you get those ideas, the solution of which involves you 
in such difficulty ? Are they phenomena, of which you 
require an explanation, and of which you have only to 
find, in accordance with those ideas, the principles, or 
the rule of their explanation ? Suppose the whole of 
nature were spread out before you, and nothing were 
hid to your senses and to the consciousness of all that 
is presented to your intuition, yet you would never be 
able to know by one single experience the object of your 
ideas in concreto (because, in addition to that complete 
intuition, what is required is a completed synthesis, and 
the consciousness of its absolute totality, which [p. 483] 
is impossible by any empirical knowledge). Hence your 
question can never be provoked for the sake of explain- 
ing any given phenomenon, and as it were suggested by 
the object itself. Such an object can never come before 
you, because it can never be given by any possible expe- 
rience. In all possible perceptions you always remain 
under the sway of conditions, whether in space or in 
time ; you never come face to face with anything uncon- 
ditioned, in order thus to determine whether the uncon- 
ditioned exists in an absolute beginning of the synthesis, 



Iranscendental Dialectic 395 

or in an absolute totality of the series without any begin- 
ning. The whole, in its empirical meaning, is always 
relative only. The absolute whole of quantity (the uni- 
verse), of division, of origination, and of the condition of 
existence in general, with all the attendant questions as 
to whether it can be realised by a finite synthesis or by 
a synthesis to be carried on ad infinitum, has nothing 
to do with any possible experience. You would, for 
instance, never be able to explain the phenomena of a 
body in the least better, or even differently, whether 
you assume that it consists of simple or throughout of 
composite parts : for neither a simple phenomenon, nor 
an infinite composition can ever meet your senses. Phe- 
nomena require to be explained so far only as the condi- 
tions of their explanation are given in perception ; but 
whatever may exist in them, if comprehended [p. 484] 
as an absohtte whole, can 1 never be a perception. Yet it 
is this very whole the explanation of which is required in 
the transcendental problems of reason. 

As therefore the solution of these problems can never 
be supplied by experience, you cannot say that it is un- 
certain what ought to be predicated of the object. For 
your object is in your brain only, and cannot possibly 
exist outside it ; so that you have only to take care to 
be at one with yourselves, and to avoid the amphiboly, 
which changes your idea into a pretended representation 
of an object empirically given, and therefore to be known 
according to the laws of experience. The dogmatical 
solution is therefore not only uncertain, but impossible ; 
while the critical solution, which may become perfectly 

1 Read keine in original, not cine. 



396 Transcendental Dialectic 

certain, does not consider the question objectively, but 
only with reference to the foundation of the knowledge 
on which it is based. 

THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON [1x485] 

Section V 

Sceptical Representation of the Cosmological Questions in 
the Four Transcendental Ideas 

We should no doubt gladly desist from wishing to have 
our questions answered dogmatically, if we understood 
beforehand that, whatever the answer might be, it would 
only increase our ignorance, and throw us from one incom- 
prehensibility into another, from one obscurity into a still 
greater obscurity, or it may be even into contradictions. 
If our question can only be answered by yes or no, it 
would seem to be prudent to take no account at first of 
the probable grounds of the answer, but to consider 
before, what we should gain, if the answer was yes, and 
what, if the answer was no. If we should find that in 
either case nothing comes of it but mere nonsense, we 
are surely called upon to examine our question critically, 
and to see whether it does not rest on a groundless sup- 
position, playing only with an idea which betrays its fal- 
sity in its application and its consequences better than 
when represented by itself. This is the great advantage 
of the sceptical treatment of questions which [p. 486] 
pure reason puts to pure reason. We get rid by it, with 
a little effort, of a great amount of dogmatical rubbish, 
in order to put in its place sober criticism which, as a 
true cathartic, removes successfully all illusion with its 
train of omniscience. 



Transcendental Dialectic 397 

If, therefore, I could know beforehand that a cosmo- 
logical idea, in whatever way it might try to realise the 
unconditioned of the regressive synthesis of phenomena 
(whether in the manner of the thesis or in that of the 
antithesis), that, I say, the cosmological idea would always 
be either too large or too small for any concept of the under- 
standing, I should understand that, as that cosmological 
idea refers only to an object of experience which is to 
correspond to a possible concept of the understanding, it 
must be empty and without meaning, because the object 
does not fit into it, whatever I may do to adapt it. And 
this must really be the case with all cosmical concepts, 
which on that very account involve reason, so long as it 
remains attached to them, in inevitable antinomy. For 
suppose : — 

First, That the world has no beginning, and you will 
find that it is too large for your concept, which, as it 
consists in a successive regressus, can never reach the 
whole of past eternity. Or, suppose, that the world has 
a beginning, then it is again too small for the concept 
of your understanding engaged in the necessary empiri- 
cal regressus. For as a beginning always pre- [p. 487] 
supposes a time preceding, it is not yet unconditioned ; 
and the law of the empirical use of the understanding 
obliges you to look for a higher condition of time, so that, 
with reference to such a law, the world (as limited in time) 
is clearly too small. 

The same applies to the twofold answer to the question 
regarding the extent of the world in space. For if it is 
infinite and unlimited, it is too large for every possible 
empirical concept. If it is finite and limited, you have 
a perfect right to ask what determines that limit. Empty 



398 Transcendental Dialectic 

space is not an independent correlate of things, and can- 
not be a final condition, still less an empirical condition 
forming a part of a possible experience ; — for how can 
there be experience of what is absolutely void ? But, in 
order to produce an absolute totality in an empirical syn- 
thesis, it is always requisite that the unconditioned should 
be an empirical concept. Thus it follows that a limited 
world would be too small for your concept. 

Secondly, If every phenomenon in space (matter) con- 
sists of an infinite number of parts, the regressus of a 
division will always be too large for your concept, while 
if the division of space is to stop at any member (the 
simple), it would be too small for the idea of the uncondi- 
tioned, because that member always admits of a regres- 
sus to more parts contained in it. [p. 488] 

Thirdly, If you suppose that everything that happens 
in the world is nothing but the result of the laws of 
nature, the causality of the cause will always be some- 
thing that happens, and that necessitates a regressus to 
a still higher cause, and therefore a continuation of the 
series of conditions a parte priori without end. Mere 
active nature, therefore, is too large for any concept in 
the synthesis of cosmical events. 

If you admit, on the contrary, spontaneously produced 
events, therefore generation from freedom', you have still, 
according to an inevitable law of nature, to ask why, and 
you are forced by the empirical law of causality beyond 
that point, so that you find that any such totality of con- 
nection is too small for your necessary empirical concept. 

Fourthly, If you admit an absolutely necessary Being 
(whether it be the world itself or something in the world, 
or the cause of the world), you place it at a time infinitely 



Transcendental Dialectic 399 

remote from any given point of time, because otherwise 
it would be dependent on another and antecedent exist- 
ence. In that case, however, such an existence would 
be unapproachable by your empirical concept, and too 
la?-ge even to be reached by any continued regressus. 

But if, according to your opinion, everything [p. 489] 
which belongs to the world (whether as conditioned or 
as condition) is contingent, then every given existence 
is too small for your concept, because compelling you 
to look still for another existence, on which it depends. 

We have said that in all these cases, the cosmical idea 
is either too large or too small for the empirical regressus, 
and therefore for every possible concept of the under- 
standing. But why did we not take the opposite view 
and say that in the former case the empirical concept is 
always too small for the idea, and in the latter too large, 
so that blame should attach to the empirical regressus, 
and not to the cosmological idea, which we accused of 
deviating from its object, namely, possible experience, 
either by its too-much or its too-little ? The reason was 
this. It is possible experience alone that can impart 
reality to our concepts ; without this, a concept is only 
an idea without truth, and without any reference to an 
object. Hence the possible empirical concept was the 
standard by which to judge the idea, whether it be an 
idea and fiction only, or whether it has an object in the 
world. For we then only say that anything is relatively 
to something else either too large or too small, if it is 
required for the sake of the other and ought to be 
adapted to it. One of the playthings of the old dia- 
lectical school was the question, whether we [p. 490] 
should say that the ball is too large or the hole too small, 



4<do Transcendental Dialectic 

if a ball cannot pass through a hole. In this case it is 
indifferent what expression we use, because we do not 
know which of the two exists for the sake of the other. 
But you would never say that the man is too large for 
his coat, but that the coat is too small for the man. 

We have thus been led at least to a well-founded 
suspicion that the cosmological ideas, and with them all 
the conflicting sophistical assertions, may rest on an 
empty and merely imaginary conception of the manner 
in which the object of those ideas can be given, and this 
suspicion may lead us on the right track to discover the 
illusion which has so long led us astray. 



THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON 

Section VI 

Transcendental Idealism as the Key to the Solution of 
Cosmological Dialectic 

It has been sufficiently proved in the transcendental 
Esthetic that everything which is perceived in space and 
time, therefore all objects of an experience possible to us, 
are nothing but phenomena, that is, mere representations 
which, such as they are represented, namely, as [p. 491] 
extended beings, or series of changes, have no inde- 
pendent existence outside our thoughts. This system 
I call Trans ce7idental Idealism} Transcendental realism 
changes these modifications of our sensibility into self- 
subsistent things, that is, it changes mere representatio^is 
into things by themselves. 

1 See Supplement XXVIII. 



Tra?iscendental Dialectic 401 

It would be unfair to ask us to adopt that long-decried 
empirical idealism which, while it admits the independent 
reality of space, denies the existence of extended beings 
in it, or at all events considers it as doubtful and does not 
admit that there is in this respect a sufficiently established 
difference between dream and reality. It sees no difficulty 
with regard to the phenomena of the internal sense in 
time, being real things ; nay, it even maintains that this 
internal experience alone sufficiently proves the real 
existence of its object (by itself), with all the deter- 
minations in time. 

Our own transcendental idealism, on the contrary, 
allows that the objects of external intuition may be real, 
as they are perceived in space, and likewise all changes in 
time, as they are represented by the internal sense. For 
as space itself is a form of that intuition which we call ex- 
ternal, and as there would be no empirical repre- [p. 492] 
sentation at all, unless there were objects in space, 'we can 
and must admit the extended beings in it as real ; and the 
same applies to time. Space itself, however, as well as 
time, and with them all phenomena, are not tilings by 
themselves, but representations, and cannot exist outside 
our mind ; and even the internal sensuous intuition of our 
mind (as an object of consciousness) which is represented 
as determined by the succession of different states in time, 
is not a real self, as it exists by itself, or what is called the 
transcendental subject, but a phenomenon only, given to 
the sensibility of this to us unknown being. It cannot be 
admitted that this internal phenomenon exists as a thing 
by itself, because it is under the condition of time, which 
can never be the determination of anything by itself. In 
space and time, however, the empirical truth of phenomena 

2D 



402 Transcendental Dialectic 

is sufficiently established, and kept quite distinct from a 
dream, if both are properly and completely connected to- 
gether in experience, according to empirical laws. 

The objects of experience are therefore never given by 
themselves, but in our experience only, and do not exist 
outside it. That there may be inhabitants in [p. 493] 
the moon, though no man has ever seen them, must be 
admitted ; but it means no more than that, in the possible 
progress of our experience, we may meet with them ; for 
everything is real that hangs together with a perception, 
according to the laws of empirical progress. They are 
therefore real, if they are empirically connected with any 
real consciousness, although they are not therefore real by 
themselves, that is, apart from that progress of experience. 

Nothing is really given to us but perception, and the 
empirical progress from this to other possible perceptions. 
For by themselves phenomena, as mere representations, 
are real in perception only, which itself is nothing but the 
reality of an empirical representation, that is, phenomenal 
appearance. To call a phenomenon a real thing, before it 
is perceived, means either, that in the progress of ex- 
perience we must meet with such a perception, or it 
means nothing. For that it existed by itself, without any 
reference to our senses and possible experience, might no 
doubt be said when we speak of a thing by itself. We 
here are speaking, however, of a phenomenon only in 
space and time, which are not determinations of things 
by themselves, but only of our sensibility. Hence that 
which exists in them (phenomena) is not something by 
itself, but consists in representations only, [p. 494] 
which, unless they are given in us (in perception), exist 
nowhere. 



Transcendental Dialectic 403 

The faculty of sensuous intuition is really some kind 
of receptivity only, according to which we are affected in 
a certain way by representations the mutual relation of 
which is a pure intuition of space and time (mere forms 
of our sensibility), and which, if they are connected and 
determined in that relation of space and time, according 
to the laws of the unity of experience, are called objects. 
The non-sensuous cause of these representations is entirely 
unknown to us, and we can never perceive it as an object, 
for such a cause would have to be represented neither in 
space nor in time, which are conditions of sensuous rep- 
resentations only, and without which we cannot conceive 
any intuition. We may, however, call that purely in- 
telligible cause of phenomena in general, the tran- 
scendental object, in order that we may have something 
which corresponds to sensibility as a kind of receptivity. 
We may ascribe to that transcendental object the whole 
extent and connection of all our possible perceptions, and 
we may say that it is given by itself antecedently to all 
experience. Phenomena, however, are given accordingly, 
not by themselves, but in experience only, because they 
are mere representations which as perceptions [p. 495] 
only, signify a real object, provided that the perception 
is connected with all others, according to the rules of 
unity in experience. Thus we may say that the real 
things of time past are given in the transcendental object 
of experience, but they only are objects to me, and real 
in time past, on the supposition that I conceive that a 
regressive series of possible perceptions (whether by the 
light of history, or by the vestiges of causes and effects), 
in one word, the course of the world, leads, according to 
empirical laws, to a past series of time, as a condition of 



404 Transcendental Dialeetie 

the present time. It is therefore represented as real, 
not by itself, but in connection with a possible experience, 
so that all past events from time immemorial and before 
my own existence mean after all nothing but the possi- 
bility of an extension of the chain of experience, begin- 
ning with present perception and leading upwards to the 
conditions which determine it in time. 

If, therefore, I represent to myself all existing objects of 
the senses, at all times and in all spaces, I do not place 
them before experience into space and time, but the whole 
representation is nothing but the idea of a possible experi- 
ence, in its absolute completeness. In that alone those 
objects (which are nothing but mere representations) 
are given ; and if we say that they exist before [p. 496] 
my whole experience, this only means that they exist in 
that part of experience to which, starting from perception, 
I have first to advance. The cause of empirical conditions 
of that progress, and consequently with what members, or 
how far I may meet with certain members in that re- 
gressus, is transcendental, and therefore entirely unknown 
to me. But that cause does not concern us, but only the 
rule of the progress of experience, in which objects, 
namely phenomena, are given to me. In the end it is 
just the same whether I say, that in the empirical progress 
in space I may meet with stars a hundred times more dis- 
tant than the most distant which I see, or whether I say 
that such stars are perhaps to be met with in space, 
though no human being did ever or will ever see them. 
For though, as things by themselves, they might be given 
without any relation to possible experience, they are 
nothing to me, and therefore no objects, unless they can 
be comprehended in the series of the empirical regressus. 



Transcendental Dialectic 405 

Only in another relation, when namely these phenomena 
are meant to be used for the cosmological idea of an abso- 
lute whole, and when we have to deal with a question that 
goes beyond the limits of possible experience, the distinction 
of the mode in which the reality of those objects of the 
senses is taken becomes of importance, in order [p. 497] 
to guard against a deceptive error that would inevitably 
arise from a misinterpretation of our own empirical concepts. 

THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON 

Section VII 

Critical Decision of the Cosmological Conflict of Reason with 

itself 

The whole antinomy of pure reason rests on the dialec- 
tical argument that, if the conditioned is given, the whole 
series of conditions also is given. As therefore the objects 
of the senses are given us as conditioned, it follows, etc. 
Through this argument, the major of which seems so 
natural and self-evident, cosmological ideas have been 
introduced corresponding in number to the difference of 
conditions (in the synthesis of phenomena) which consti- 
tute a series. These cosmological ideas postulate the 
absolute totality of those series, and thus place reason in 
inevitable contradiction with itself. Before, however, we 
show what is deceptive in this sophistical argument, we 
must prepare ourselves for it by correcting and defining 
certain concepts occurring in it. 

First, the following proposition is clear and admits of no 
doubt, that if the conditioned is given, it imposes on us 
the regressus in the series of all conditions of [p. 498] 
it ; for it follows from the very concept of the conditioned 



4<d6 Transcendental Dialectic 

that through it something is referred to a condition, and, 
if that condition is again conditioned, to a more distant 
condition, and so on through all the members of the 
series. This proposition is really analytical, and need not 
fear any transcendental criticism. It is a logical postulate 
of reason to follow up through the understanding, as far as 
possible, that connection of a concept with its conditions, 
which is inherent in the concept itself. 

Further, if the conditioned as well as its conditions are 
things by themselves, then, if the former be given, the 
regressus to the latter is not only required, but is really 
given; and as this applies to all the members of the 
series, the complete series of conditions and with it the 
unconditioned also is given, or rather it is presupposed 
that the conditioned, which was possible through that 
series only, is given. Here the synthesis of the condi- 
tioned with its condition is a synthesis of the understand- 
ing only, which represents things as they are, without 
asking whether and how we can arrive at the knowledge 
of them. But if I have to deal with phenomena, which, 
as mere representations, are not given at all, unless I 
attain to a knowledge of them (that is, to the [p. 499] 
phenomena themselves, for they are nothing but empirical 
knowledge), then I cannot say in the same sense that, if 
the conditioned is given, all its conditions (as phenomena) 
are also given, and can therefore by no means conclude 
the absolute totality of the series. For phenomena in their 
apprehension are themselves nothing but an empirical syn- 
thesis (in space and time), and are given therefore in that 
synthesis only. Now it follows by no means that, if the 
conditioned (as phenomenal) is given, the synthesis also 
that constitutes its empirical condition should thereby be 



Trattscendciital Dialectic 407 

given at the same time and presupposed ; for this takes 
place in the regressus only, and never without it. What we 
may say in such a case is this, that a regressus to the con- 
ditions, that is, a continued empirical synthesis in that 
direction is required, and that conditions cannot be want- 
ing that are given through that regressus. 

Hence we see that the major of the cosmological argu- 
ment takes the conditioned in the transcendental sense of 
a pure category, while the minor takes it in the empirical 
sense of a concept of the understanding, referring to mere 
phenomena, so that it contains that dialectical deceit which 
is called Sophisma figurae dictionis. That deceit, [p. 500] 
however, is not artificial, but a perfectly natural illusion of 
our common reason. It is owing to it that, in the major, 
we presuppose the conditions and their series as it were 
on trust, if anything is given as conditioned, because this 
is no more than the logical postulate to assume complete 
premisses for any given conclusion. Nor does there exist 
in the connection of the conditioned with its condition any 
order of time, but they are presupposed in themselves as 
given together. It is equally natural also in the minor to 
look on phenomena as things by themselves, and as objects 
given to the understanding only in the same manner as in 
the major, as no account was taken of all the conditions of 
intuition under which alone objects can be given. But 
there is an important distinction between these concepts, 
which has been overlooked. The synthesis of the condi- 
tioned with its condition, and the whole series of condi- 
tions in the major, was in no way limited by time, and was 
free from any concept of succession. The empirical syn- 
thesis, on the contrary, and the series of conditions in 
phenomena, which was subsumed in the minor, is neces- 



408 Transcendental Dialectic 

sarily successive and given as such in time only. There- 
fore I had no right to assume the absolute totality of the 
synthesis and of the series represented by it in this case 
as well as in the former. For in the former all the mem- 
bers of the series are given by themselves (without deter- 
mination in time), while here they are possible through the 
successive regressus only, which cannot exist [p. 501] 
unless it is actually carried out. 

After convicting them of such a mistake in the argu- 
ment adopted by both parties as the foundation of their 
cosmological assertions, both might justly be dismissed as 
not being able to produce any good title in support of 
their claims. But even thus their quarrel is not yet 
ended, as if it had been proved that both parties, or one of 
them, were wrong in the matter contended for (in the con- 
clusion), though they had failed to support it by valid proof. 
Nothing seems clearer than that, if one maintains that the 
world has a beginning, and the other that it has no begin- 
ning, but exists from all eternity, one or the other must be 
right. But if this were so, as the arguments on both sides 
are equally clear, it would still remain impossible ever to 
find out on which side the truth lies, and the suit continues, 
although both parties have been ordered to keep the peace 
before the tribunal of reason. Nothing remains therefore 
in order to settle the quarrel once for all, and to the satis- 
faction of both parties, but to convince them that, though 
they can refute each other so eloquently, they are really 
quarrelling about nothing, and that a certain transcendental 
illusion has mocked them with a reality where no [p. 502] 
reality exists. We shall now enter upon this way of ad- 
justing a dispute, which cannot be adjudicated. 



Transcendental Dialectic 409 

The Eleatic philosopher Zeno, a subtle dialectician, was 
severely reprimanded by Plato as a heedless Sophist who, 
in order to display his skill, would prove a proposition by 
plausible arguments and subvert the same immediately 
afterwards by arguments equally strong. He maintained, 
for instance, that God (which to him was probably nothing 
more than the universe) is neither finite nor infinite, 
neither in motion nor at rest, neither similar nor dissimilar 
to any other thing. It seemed to his critics as if he had 
intended to deny completely both of the two self-contra- 
dictory proposition which would be absurd. But I do not 
think that he can be rightly charged with this. We shall 
presently consider the first of these propositions more 
carefully. With regard to the others, if by the word God 
he meant the universe, he could not but say that it is 
neither permanently present in its place (at rest) nor that 
it changes it (in motion), because all places exist in the 
universe only, while the universe exists in no place. If 
the universe comprehends in itself everything that exists, 
it follows that it cannot be similar or dissimilar to any 
other thing, because there is no other thing besides it 
with which it could be compared. If two oppo- [p. 503] 
site judgments presuppose an inadmissible condition, they 
both, in spite of their contradiction (which, however, is no 
real contradiction), fall to the ground, because the condi- 
tion fails under which alone either of the propositions was 
meant to be valid. 

If somebody were to say that everybody has either a 
good or a bad smell, a third case is possible, namely, that 
it has no smell at all, in which case both contradictory 
propositions would be false. If I say that it is either good 
smelling or not good smelling (vel snavcolens vel non 



410 Transcendental Dialectic 

suaveolcns), in that case the two judgments arc contradic- 
tory, and the former only is wrong, while its contradictory 
opposite, namely, that some bodies are not good smelling, 
comprehends those bodies also which have no smell at all. 
In the former opposition (per disparata) the contingent 
condition of the concept of a body (smell) still remained 
in the contradictory judgment and was not eliminated by 
it, so that the latter could not be called the contradictory 
opposite of the former. 

If I say therefore that the world is either infinite in 
space or is not infinite (non est infinitus), then, if the for- 
mer proposition is wrong, its contradictory opposite, that 
the world is not infinite, must be true. I should thus only 
eliminate an infinite world without affirming another, 
namely, the finite. But if I had said the world [p. 504] 
is either infinite or finite (not-infinite), both statements 
may be false. For I then look upon the world, as by itself, 
determined in regard to its extent, and I do not only elimi- 
nate in the opposite statement the infinity, and with it, it 
may be, its whole independent existence, but I add a deter- 
mination to the world as a thing existing by itself, which 
may be false, because the world may not be a thing by 
itself, and therefore, with regard to extension, neither 
infinite nor finite. This kind of opposition I may be 
allowed to call dialectical, that the real contradiction, 
the analytical opposition. Thus then of two judgments 
opposed to each other dialectically both may be false, 
because the one does not only contradict the other, but 
says something more than is requisite for a contradic- 
tion. 

If we regard the two statements that the world is in- 
finite in extension, and that the world is finite in exten- 



Transcendental Dialectic 41 1 

sion, as contradictory opposites, we assume that the world 
(the whole series of phenomena) is a thing by itself ; for 
it remains, whether I remove the infinite or the finite 
regressus in the series of its phenomena. But if we 
remove this supposition, or this transcendental illusion, 
and deny that it is a thing by itself, then the contradic- 
tory opposition of the two statements becomes [p. 505] 
purely dialectical, and as the world does not exist by 
itself (independently of the regressive series of my rep- 
resentations), it exists neither as a whole by itself infinite, 
nor as a whole by itself finite. It exists only in the em- 
pirical regressus in the series of phenomena, and nowhere 
by itself. Hence, if that series is always conditioned, it 
can never exist as complete, and the world is therefore 
not an inconditioned whole, and does not exist as such, 
either with infinite or finite extension. 

What has here been said of the first cosmological idea, 
namely, that of the absolute totality of extension in phe- 
nomena, applies to the others also. The series of condi- 
tions is to be found only in the regressive synthesis, never 
by itself, as complete, in phenomenon as an independent 
thing, existing prior to every regressus. Hence I shall 
have to say that the number of parts in any given phe- 
nomenon is by itself neither finite nor infinite, because 
a phenomenon does not exist by itself, and its parts are 
only found through the regressus of the decomposing syn- 
thesis through and in the regressus, and that regressus 
can never be given as absolutely complete, whether as 
finite or as infinite. The same applies to the series of 
causes, one being prior to the other, and to the scries 
leading from conditioned to unconditioned necessary exist- 
ence, which can never be regarded either by [p. 506] 



412 



Transcendental Dialectic 



itself finite in its totality or infinite, because, as a series 
of subordinated representations, it forms a dynamical re- 
gressus only, and cannot exist prior to it, by itself, as a 
self-subsistent series of things. 

The antinomy of pure reason with regard to its cosmo- 
logical ideas is therefore removed by showing that it is 
dialectical only, and a conflict of an illusion produced by 
our applying the idea of absolute totality, which exists 
only as a condition of things by themselves, to phe- 
nomena, which exist in our representation only, and 
if they form a series, in the successive regressus, but 
nowhere else. We may, however, on the other side, 
derive from that antinomy a true, if not dogmatical, at 
least critical and doctrinal advantage, namely, by prov- 
ing through it indirectly the transcendental ideality of 
phenomena, in case anybody should not have been satis- 
fied by the direct proof given in the transcendental 
^Esthetic. The proof would consist in the following 
dilemma. If the world is a whole existing by itself, it 
is either finite or infinite. Now the former as 'well as 
the latter proposition is false, as has been shown by the 
proofs given in the antithesis on one and in the thesis on 
the other side. It is false, therefore, that the world (the 
sum total of all phenomena) is a whole existing [p. 507] 
by itself. Hence it follows that phenomena in general 
are nothing outside our representations, which was what 
we meant by their transcendental ideality. 

This remark is of some importance, because it shows 
that our proofs of the fourfold antinomy were not mere 
sophistry, but honest and correct, always under the 
(wrong) supposition that phenomena, or a world of sense 
which comprehends them all, are things by themselves. 



Transcendental Dialectic 413 

The conflict of the conclusions drawn from this shows, 
however, that there is a flaw in the supposition, and thus 
leads us to the discovery of the true nature of things, as 
objects of the senses. This transcendental Dialectic 
therefore does not favour scepticism, but only the scep- 
tical method, which can point to it as an example of its 
great utility, if we allow the arguments of reason to fight 
against each other with perfect freedom, from which some- 
thing useful and serviceable for the correction of our judg- 
ments will always result, though it may not be always that 
which we were looking for. 

THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON [p. 508] 

Section VIII 

The Regulative Principle of Pure Reason with Regard to 
the Cosmological Ideas 

As through the cosmological principle of totality no real 
maximum is given of the series of conditions in the world 
of sense, as a thing by itself, but can only be required in 
the regressus of that series, that principle of pure reason, 
if thus amended, still retains its validity, not indeed as an 
axiom, requiring us to think the totality in the object as 
real, but as a problem for the understanding, and therefore 
for the subject, encouraging us to undertake and to con- 
tinue, according to the completeness in the idea, the re- 
gressus in the series of conditions of anything given as 
conditioned. In our sensibility, that is, in space and time, 
every condition which we can reach in examining given 
phenomena is again conditioned, because these phenom- 
ena are not objects by themselves, in which something 



414 Transcendental Dialectic 

absolutely unconditioned might possibly exist, but empiri- 
cal representations only, which always must have their 
condition in intuition, whereby they are determined in 
space and time. The principle erf reason is therefore 
properly a rule only, which in the series of con- [p. 509] 
ditions of given phenomena postulates a regrcssus which 
is never allowed to stop at anything absolutely uncondi- 
tioned. It is therefore no principle of the possibility of 
experience and of the empirical knowledge of the objects 
of the senses, and not therefore a principle of the under- 
standing, because every experience is (according to a 
given intuition) within its limits ; nor is it a constitutive 
principle of reason, enabling us to extend the concept of 
the world of sense beyond all possible experience, but it 
is merely a principle of the greatest possible continuation 
and extension of our experience, allowing no empirical 
limit to be taken as an absolute limit. It is therefore a 
principle of reason, which, as a rule, postulates what we 
ought to do in the regressus, but does not anticipate what 
may be given in the object, before such regressus. I 
therefore call it a regulative principle of reason, while, on 
the contrary, the principle of the absolute totality of the 
series of conditions, as given in the object (the phenom- 
ena) by itself, would be a constitutive cosmological prin- 
ciple, the hollowness of which I have tried to indicate 
by this very distinction, thus preventing what otherwise 
would have inevitably happened (through a transcenden- 
tal surreptitious proceeding), namely, an idea, which is to 
serve as a rule only, being invested with objective reality. 
In order properly to determine the meaning of this rule 
of pure reason it should be remarked, first of all, that it 
cannot tell us what the object is, but only how [p. .510] 



Transcendental Dialectic 415 

the empirical regressns is to be carried out, in order to 
arrive at the complete concept of the object. If we 
attempted the first, it would become a constitutive prin* 
ciple, such as pure reason can never supply. It cannot 
therefore be our intention to say through this principle, 
that a series of conditions of something, given as condi- 
tioned, is by itself either finite or infinite ; for in that case 
a mere idea of absolute totality, produced in itself only, 
would represent in thought an object such as can never 
be given in experience, and an objective reality, indepen- 
dent of empirical synthesis, would have been attributed 
to a series of phenomena. This idea of reason can there- 
fore do no more than prescribe a rule to the regressive 
synthesis in the series of conditions, according to which 
that synthesis is to advance from the conditioned, through 
all subordinate conditions, towards the unconditioned, 
though it can never reach it, for the absolutely uncon- 
ditioned can never be met with in experience. ' 

To this end it is necessary, first of all, to define accu- 
rately the synthesis of a series, so far as it never is com- 
plete. People are in the habit of using for this purpose 
two expressions which are meant to establish a difference, 
though they are unable clearly to define the ground of the 
distinction. Mathematicians speak only of a progrcssus 
in infinitum. Those who enquire into concepts (philoso- 
phers) will admit instead the expression of a [p. 511] 
progressus in i?idefi?iitum only. Without losing any time 
in the examination of the reasons which may have sug- 
gested such a distinction, and of its useful or useless 
application, I shall at once endeavour to define these 
concepts accurately for my own purpose. 

Of a straight line it can be said correctly that it may be 



41 6 Transcendental Dialectic 

produced to infinity ; and here the distinction between an 
infinite and an indefinite progress (progress*** in indefini- 
te™) would be mere subtilty. No doubt, if we are told to 
carry on a line, it would be more correct to add in iudefi- 
nitum, than in infinitum, because the former means no 
more than, produce it as far as yon wish, but the second, 
you shall never cease producing it (which can never be 
intended). Nevertheless, if we speak only of what is 
possible, the former expression is quite correct, because 
we can always make it longer, if we like, without end. 
The same applies in all cases where we speak only of 
the progressus, that is, of our proceeding from the con- 
dition to the conditioned, for such progress proceeds in 
the series of phenomena without end. From a given pair 
of parents we may, in the descending line of generation, 
proceed without end, and conceive quite well that that 
line should so continue in the world. For here reason 
never requires an absolute totality of the series, [p. 512] 
because it is not presupposed as a condition, and as it 
were given (datum), but only as something conditioned, 
that is, capable only of being given (dabile), and can be 
added to without end. 

The case is totally different with the problem, how far 
the regressus from something given as conditioned may 
ascend in a series to its conditions ; whether I may 
call it a regressus into the infinite, or only into the 
indefinite (in indefinitum ; and whether I may ascend, for 
instance, from the men now living, through the series of 
their ancestors, in infinitum ; or whether I may only say 
that, so far as I have gone back, I have never met with 
an empirical ground for considering the series limited any- 
where, so that I feel justified, and at the same time obliged 



Transcendental Dialectic 417 

to search for an ancestor of every one of these ancestors, 
though not to presuppose them. 

I say, therefore, that where the whole is given in 
empirical intuition, the regressus in the series of its in- 
ternal conditions proceeds in infinitum, while if a mem- 
ber only of a series is given, from which the regressus 
to the absolute totality has first to be carried out, the 
regressus is only in indefinitum. Thus we must [p. 513] 
say that the division of matter, as given between its limits 
(a body), goes on in infinitum, because that matter is 
complete and therefore, with all its possible parts, given in 
empirical intuition. As the condition of that whole con- 
sists in its part, and the condition of that part in the part 
of that part, and so on, and as in this regressus of decom- 
position we never meet with an unconditioned (indivisible) 
member of that series of conditions, there is nowhere an 
empirical ground for stopping the division ; nay, the fur- 
ther members of that continued division are themselves 
empirically given before the continuation of the division, 
and therefore the division goes on in infinitum. The series 
of ancestors, on the contrary, of any given man, exists 
nowhere in its absolute totality, in any possible experience, 
while the regressus goes on from every link in the gener- 
ation to a higher one, so that no empirical limit can be 
found which should represent a link as absolutely uncon- 
ditioned. As, however, the links too, which might supply 
the condition, do not exist in the empirical intuition of the 
whole, prior to the regressus, that regressus does not pro- 
ceed in infinitum (by a division of what is given), but to an 
indefinite distance, in its search for more links in addition 
to those which are given, and which themselves are again 
always conditioned only. 

2E 



41 8 Transcendental Dialectic 

In neither case — the regressus in infinitum [p. 514] 
nor the regressus in indefinitum — is the series of conditions 
to be considered as given as infinite in the object. They 
are not things by themselves, but phenomena only, which, 
as conditions of each other, are given only in the regressus 
itself. Therefore the question is no longer how great this 
series of conditions may be by itself, whether finite or 
infinite, for it is nothing by itself, but only how we are to 
carry out the empirical regressus, and how far we may 
continue it. And here we see a very important difference 
with regard to the rule of that progress. If the whole is 
given empirically, it is possible to go back in the series of 
its conditions hi infinitum. But if the whole is not given, 
but has first to be given through an empirical regressus, I 
can only say that it is possible to proceed to still higher 
conditions of the series. In the former case I could say 
that more members exist and are empirically given than I 
can reach through the regressus (of decomposition); in the 
latter I can only say that I may advance still further in the 
regressus, because no member is empirically given as abso- 
lutely unconditioned, and a higher member therefore always 
possible, and therefore the enquiry for it necessary. In the 
former case it was necessary to find more members of the 
series, in the latter it is necessary to enquire for more, be- 
cause no experience is absolutely limiting. For [p. 515] 
either you have no perception which absolutely limits your 
empirical regressus, and in that case you cannot consider 
. that regressus as complete, or you have a perception which 
limits your series, and in that case it cannot be a part of 
your finished series (because what limits must be different 
from that which is limited by it), and you must therefore 
continue your regressus to that condition also, and so on 
for ever. 



Transcendental Dialectic 419 

The following section, by showing their application, will 
place these observations in their proper light. 

THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON 

Section IX 

Of tlie Empirical Use of the Regulative Principle of Reason 
with Regard to all Cosmological Ideas 

No transcendental use, as we have shown on several 
occasions, can be made of the concepts either of the 
understanding or of reason ; and the absolute totality of 
the series of conditions in the world of sense is due 
entirely to a transcendental use of reason, which demands 
this unconditioned completeness from what presupposes 
as a thing by itself. As no such thing is contained in 
the world of sense, we can never speak again [p. 516] 
of the absolute quantity of different series in it, whether 
they be limited or in themselves unlimited ; but the ques- 
tion can only be, how far, in the empirical regressus, we 
may go back in tracing experience to its conditions, in 
order to stop, according to the rule of reason, at no other 
answer of its questions but such as is in accordance with 
the object. 

What therefore remains to us is only the validity of the 
principle of reason, as a rule for the continuation and for 
the extent of a possible experience, after its invalidity, as 
a constitutive principle of things by themselves, has been 
sufficiently established. If we have clearly established 
that invalidity, the conflict of reason with itself will be 
entirely finished, because not only has the illusion which 
led to that conflict been removed through critical analysis, 
but in its place the sense in which reason agrees with 



4 20 Transcendental Dialectic 

itself, and the misapprehension of which was the only 
cause of conflict, has been clearly exhibited, and a prin- 
ciple formerly dialectical changed into a doctrinal one. In 
fact, if that principle, according to its subjective meaning, 
can be proved fit to determine the greatest possible use of 
the understanding in experience, as adequate to its objects, 
this would be the same as if it determined, as an ax- 
iom (which is impossible from pure reason), the [p. 517] 
objects themselves a priori: for this also could not, with 
reference to the objects of experience, exercise a greater 
influence on the extension and correction of our know- 
ledge, than proving itself efficient in the most extensive 
use of our understanding, as applied to experience. 



Solution of the Cosmo logical Idea of the Totality of the 
Composition of Phenomena in an Universe 

Here, as well as in the other cosmological problems, 
the regulative principle of reason is founded on the 
proposition that, in the empirical regressus, no experience 
of an absolute limit, that is, of any condition as such, which 
empirically is absolutely unconditioned, can exist. The 
ground of this is that such an experience would contain 
a limitation of phenomena by nothing or by the void, on 
which the continued regressus by means of experience 
must abut ; and this is impossible. 

This proposition, which says that in an empirical 
regressus I can only arrive at the condition which itself 
must be considered empirically conditioned, [p. 518] 
contains the rule in terminis, that however far I may 



Transcendental Dialectic 421 

have reached in the ascending series, I must always en- 
quire for a still higher member of that series, whether it 
be known to me by experience or not. 

For the solution, therefore, of the first cosmological 
problem, nothing more is wanted than to determine 
whether, in the regressus to the unconditioned extension 
of the universe (in time and in space), this nowhere limited 
ascent is to be called a regressus in infinitum , or a regres- 
sus in indefinitum. 

The mere general representation of the series of all 
past states of the world, and of the things which exist 
together in space, is itself nothing but a possible empirical 
regressus, which I represent to myself, though as yet as in- 
definite, and through which alone the concept of such a 
series of conditions of the perception given to me can 
arise. 1 Now the universe exists for me as a concept only, 
and never (as a whole) as an intuition. Hence [p. 519] 
I cannot from its quantity conclude the quantity of the 
regressus, and determine the one by the other; but I must 
first frame to myself a concept of the quantity of the world 
through the quantity of the empirical regressus. Of this, 
however, I never know anything more than that, em- 
pirically, I must go on from every given member of the 
series of conditions to a higher and more distant member. 
Hence the quantity of the whole of phenomena is not ab- 
solutely determined, and we cannot say therefore that it is 



1 This cosmical series can therefore be neither greater nor smaller than 
the possible empirical regressus on which alone its concept rests. And as this 
can give neither a definite infinite, nor a definite finite (absolutely limited), it 
becomes clear that we cannot accept the quantity of the world, either as finite 
or as infinite, because the regressus (by which it is represented) admits of 
neither the one nor the other. 



422 Tra?iscc?ide?ital Dialectic 

a regressus in infinitum, because this would anticipate the 
members which the regressus has not yet reached, and 
represent its number as so large that no empirical synthe- 
sis could ever reach it. It would therefore (though nega- 
tively only) determine the quantity of the world prior to 
the regressus, which is impossible, because it is not given 
to me by any intuition (in its totality), so that its quantity 
cannot be given prior to the regressus. Hence we cannot 
say anything of the quantity or extension of the world by 
itself, not even that there is in it a regressus in infinitum ; 
but we must look for the concept of its quantity according 
to the rule that determines the empirical regressus in it. 
This rule, however, says no more than that, however far 
we may have got in the series of empirical conditions, we 
ought never to assume an absolute limit, but subordinate 
every phenomenon, as conditioned, to another, [p. 520] 
as its condition, and that we must proceed further to that 
condition. This is the regressus in indefinitum, which, as 
it fixes no quantity in the object, can clearly enough be 
distinguished from the regressus in infinitum. 

I cannot say therefore that, as to time past or as to 
space, the world is infinite. For such a concept of quan- 
tity, as a given infinity, is empirical, and therefore, with 
reference to the world as an object of the senses, abso- 
lutely impossible. Nor shall I say that the regressus, 
beginning with a given perception, and going on to every- 
thing that limits it in a series, both in space and in time 
past, goes on in infinitum, because this would presuppose 
an infinite quantity of the world. Nor can I say again 
that it is finite, for the absolute limit is likewise empiri- 
cally impossible. Hence it follows that I shall not be able 
to say anything of the whole object of experience (the 



Trajzscejidcntal Dialectic 423 

world of sense), but only of the rule, according to which 
experience can take place and be continued in accordance 
with its object. 

To the cosmological question, therefore, respecting the 
quantity of the world, the first and negative answer is, 
that the world has no first beginning in time, and no 
extreme limit in space. 

For, in the contrary case, the world would be limited 
by empty time and empty space. As however, [p. 521] 
as a phenomenon, it cannot, by itself, be either, — a phe- 
nomenon not being a thing by itself, — we should have to 
admit the perception of a limitation by means of absolute 
empty time or empty space, by which these limits of the 
world could be given in a possible experience. Such an 
experience, however, would be perfectly void of contents, 
and therefore impossible. Consequently an absolute limit 
of the world is impossible empirically, and therefore ab- 
solutely also. 1 

From this follows at the same time the affirmative 
answer, that the regressus in the series of the phenomena 
of the world, intended as a determination of the quantity 
of the world, goes on in indefinitum, which is the same as 
if we say that the world of sense has no absolute quantity, 
but that the empirical regressus (through which alone it 
can be given on the side of its conditions) has its own rule, 

1 It will have been observed that the argument has here been carried on 
in a very different way from the dogmatical argument, which was presented 
before, in the antithesis of the first antinomy. There we took the world of 
sense, according to the common and dogmatical view, as a thing given by 
itself, in its totality, before any regressus : and we had denied to it, if it did 
not occupy all time and all space, any place at all in both. Hence the con- 
clusion also was different from what it is here, for it went to the real infinity 
of the world. 



424 Transcendental Dialectic 

namely, to advance from every member of the series, as 
conditioned, to a more distant member, whether by our 
own experience, or by the guidance of history, [p. 522] 
or through the chain of causes and their effects ; and 
never to dispense with the extension of the possible 
empirical use of the understanding, this being the proper 
and really only task of reason and its principles. 

We do not prescribe by this a definite empirical regres- 
sus advancing without end in a certain class of phe- 
nomena ; as, for instance, that from a living person one 
ought always to ascend in a scries of ancestors, without 
ever expecting a first pair; or, in the series of cosmical 
bodies, without admitting in the end an extremest sun. 
All that is demanded is a progressus from phenomena to 
phenomena, even if they should not furnish us with a real 
perception (if it is too weak in degree to become experi- 
ence in our consciousness), because even thus they belong 
to a possible experience. 

Every beginning is in time, and every limit of extension 
in space. Space and time, however, exist in the world of 
sense only. Hence phenomena only are limited in the 
world conditionally ; the zvorld itself, however, is limited 
neither conditionally nor unconditionally. 

For the same reason, and because the world can never 
be given complete, and even the series of conditions of 
something given as conditioned cannot, as a cosmical 
series, be give?z as complete, the concept of the quantity 
of the world can be given through the regressus only, 
and not before it in any collective intuition, [p. 523] 
That regressus, however, consists only in the determin- 
ing of the quantity, and does not give, therefore, any 
definite concept, nor the concept of any quantity which, 



Transcendental Dialectic 425 

with regard to a certain measure, could be called infinite. 
It does not therefore proceed to the infinite (as if given), 
but only into an indefinite distance, in order to give a 
quantity (of experience) which has first to be realised by 
that very regressus. 

II 

Solution of the Cosmological Idea of the Totality of the 
Division of a Whole given in Intuition 

If I divide a whole, given in intuition, I proceed from 
the conditioned to the conditions of its possibility. The 
division of the parts (subdivisio or decompositio) is a 
regressus in the series of those conditions. The absolute 
totality of this series could only be given, if the regressus 
could reach the simple parts. But if all parts in a continu- 
ously progressing decomposition are always divisible again, 
then the division, that is, the regressus from the condi- 
tioned to its conditions, goes on in infinitum; because 
the conditions (the parts) are contained in the conditioned 
itself, and as that is given as complete in an [p. 524] 
intuition enclosed within limits, are all given with it. 
The regressus must therefore not be called a regressus 
in indefinitum, such as was alone allowed by the former 
cosmological idea, where from the conditioned we had to 
proceed to conditions outside it, and therefore not given 
at the same time through it, but first to be added in the 
empirical regressus. It is not allowed, however, even in 
the case of a whole that is divisible in infinitum, to say, 
that it consists of infinitely many parts. For although all 
parts are contained in the intuition of the whole, yet the 
whole division is not contained in it, because it consists 



426 Transcendental Dialectic 

in the continuous decomposition, or in the regressus itself, 
which first makes that series real. As this regressus is 
infinite, all members (parts) at which it arrives are con- 
tained, no doubt, in the given whole as aggregates ; but 
not so the whole series of the division, which is successively 
infinite and never complete, and cannot, therefore, repre- 
sent an infinite number, or any comprehension of it as a 
whole. 

It is easy to apply this remark to space. Every 
space, perceived within its limits, is such a whole the 
parts of which, in spite of all decomposition, are 
always spaces again, and therefore divisible in in- 
finitum, [p. 525] 

From this follows, quite naturally, the second applica- 
tion to an external phenomenon, enclosed within its limits 
(body). The divisibility of this is founded on the divisi- 
bility of space, which constitutes the possibility of the 
body, as an extended whole. This is therefore divisible 
in infinitum, without consisting, however, of an infinite 
number of parts. 

It might seem indeed, as a body must be represented 
as a substance in space, that, with regard to the law 
of the divisibility of space, it might differ from it, 
for we might possibly concede, that in the latter case 
decomposition could never do away with all composition, 
because in that case all space, which besides has nothing 
independent of its own, would cease to be (which is 
impossible), while, even if all composition of matter should 
be done away with in thought, it would not seem com- 
patible with the concept of a substance that nothing 
should remain of it, because substance is meant to be the 
subject of all composition, and ought to remain in its 



Transcendental Dialectic 427 

elements, although their connection in space, by which 
they become a body, should have been removed. But, 
what applies to a thing by itself, represented by a 
pure concept of the understanding, does not apply to 
what is called substance, as a phenomenon. This is 
not an absolute subject, but only a permanent image 
of sensibility, nothing in fact but intuition, [p. 526] 
in which nothing unconditioned can ever be met with. 
But although this rule of the progress in infinitum 
applies without any doubt to the subdivision of a phe- 
nomenon, as a mere occupant of space, it does not apply 
to the number of the parts, separated already in a cer- 
tain way in a given whole, which thus constitute a 
quantum discretum. To suppose that in every organised 
whole every part is again organised, and that by thus 
dissecting the parts in infinitum we should meet again 
and again with new organised parts, in fact that the 
whole is organised in infinitum, is a thought difficult to 
think, though it is possible to think that the parts of 
matter decomposed in infinitum might become organised. 
For the infinity of the division of a given phenomenon 
in space is founded simply on this, that by it divisibility 
only, that is, an entirely indefinite number of parts, is 
given, while the parts themselves can only be given and 
determined through the subdivision, iri short, that the 
whole is not itself already divided. Thus the division 
can determine a number in it, which goes so far as we 
like to go, in the regressus of a division. In an or- 
ganic body, on the contrary, organised in infinitum the 
whole is by that very concept represented as [p. 527] 
divided, and a number of parts, definite in itself, and yet 
infinite, is found in it, before every regressus of division. 



428 Transcendental Dialectic 

This would be self-contradictory, because we should have 
to consider this infinite convolute as a never-to-be-com- 
pleted series (infinite), and yet as complete in its (or- 
ganised) comprehension. Infinite division takes the phe- 
nomenon only as a quantum continuum, and is insepa- 
rable from the occupation of space, because in this very 
occupation lies the ground of endless divisibility. But as 
soon as anything is taken as a quantum discrctum, the 
number of units in it is determined, and therefore at all 
times equal to a certain number. How far the organi- 
sation in an organised body may go, experience alone can 
show us ; but though it never arrived with certainty at 
any unorganised part, they would still have to be admitted 
as lying within possible experience. It is different with 
the transcendental division of a phenomenon. How far 
that may extend is not a matter of experience, but a 
principle of reason, which never allows us to consider 
the empirical regressus in the decomposition of extended 
bodies, according to the nature of these phenomena, as at 
any time absolutely completed. 



Concluding Remarks on the Solution of the [p. 528] 
Transcendental -matJie7natical Ideas, and Preliminary 
Remark for the. Solution of the Transcende7ital-dynami- 
cal Ideas 

When exhibiting in a tabular form the antinomy of 
pure reason, through all the transcendental ideas, and 
indicating the ground of the conflict and the only means 
of removing it, by declaring both contradictory statements 
as false, we always represented the conditions as belong- 
ing to that which they conditioned, according to relations 



Transce?idental Dialectic 429 

of space and time, this being the ordinary supposition 
of the common understanding, and in fact the source 
from which that conflict arose. In that respect all dialec- 
tical representations of the totality in a series of condi- 
tions of something given as conditioned were always of 
the same cJiaracter. It was always a series in which the 
condition was connected with the conditioned, as mem- 
bers of the same series, both being thus homogeneous. In 
such a series the regressus was never conceived as com- 
pleted, or, if that had to be done, one of the members, 
being in itself conditioned, had wrongly to be accepted as 
the first, and therefore as unconditioned. If not always 
the object, that is, the conditioned, yet the series of its 
conditions was always considered according [p. 529] 
to quantity only, and then the difficulty arose (which 
could not be removed by any compromise, but only by 
cutting the knot), that reason made it either too long or 
too short for the understanding, which could in neither 
case come up to the idea. 

But in this we have overlooked an essential distinction 
between the objects, that is, the concepts of the under- 
standing, which reason tries to raise into ideas. Two of 
them, according to the above table of the categories, imply 
a mathematical, the remaining two a dynamical synthesis 
of phenomena. Hitherto this overlooking was of no great 
importance, because, in the general representation of all 
transcendental ideas, we always remained under phenome- 
nal conditions, and with regard to the two transcenden- 
tal-mathematical ideas also, we had to do with no object 
but the phenomenal only. Now, however, as we have come 
to consider the dynamical concepts of the understanding, 
so far as they should be rendered adequate to the idea of 



430 Transcendental Dialectic 

reason, that distinction becomes important, and opens to 
us an entirely new insight into the character of the suit in 
which reason is implicated. That suit had before been dis- 
missed, as resting on both sides on wrong presuppositions. 
Now, however, as there seems to be in the dy- [p. 530] 
namical antinomy such a presupposition as may be com- 
patible with the pretensions of reason, and as the judge 
himself supplies perhaps the deficiency of legal grounds, 
which had been misunderstood on both sides, the suit may 
possibly be adjusted, from this point of view, to the satis- 
faction of both parties, which was impossible in the con- 
flict of the mathematical antinomy. 

If we merely look to the extension of the series of con- 
ditions, and whether they are adequate to the idea, or 
whether the idea is too large or too small for them, the 
series are no doubt all homogeneous. But the concept 
of the understanding on which these ideas are founded 
contains either a synthesis of the Jwmogencons only (which 
is presupposed in the composition as well as the decom- 
position of every quantity), or of the heterogeneous also, 
which must at least be admitted as possible in the dy- 
namical synthesis, both in a causal connection, and in the 
connection of the necessary with the contingent. 

Thus it happens that none but sensuous conditions can 
enter into the mathematical connection of the series of 
phenomena, that is, conditions which themselves are part 
of the series ; while the dynamical series of sensuous con- 
ditions admits also of a heterogeneous condition, which is 
not a part of the series, but, as merely intelligible, outside 
it ; so that a certain satisfaction is given to reason [p. 531] 
by the unconditioned being placed before the phenomena, 
without disturbing the series of the phenomena, which 



Transcendc7ital Dialectic 431 

must always be conditioned, or breaking it off, contrary to 
the principles of the understanding. 

Owing to the dynamical ideas admitting of a condition 
of the phenomena outside their series, that is, a condition 
which itself is not a phenomenon, something arises which 
is totally different from the result of the mathematical : 
antinomy. The result of that antinomy was, that both 
the contradictory dialectical statements had to be declared 
false. The throughout conditioned character, however, of 
the dynamical series, which is inseparable from them as 
phenomena, if connected with the empirically uncon- 
ditioned, but at the same time not sensuous condition, 
may give satisfaction to the understanding on one, and 
the reason on the other side, 2 because the dialectical argu- 
ments which, in some way or other, required unconditioned 
totality in mere phenomena, vanish; while the [p. 532] 
propositions of reason, if thus amended, may both be true. 
This cannot be the case with the cosmological ideas, which 
refer only to a mathematically unconditioned unity, be- 
cause with them no condition can be found in the series 
of phenomena which is not itself a phenomenon, and as 
such constitutes one of the links of the series. 

1 Mathematical, omitted in the First and Second Editions. 

2 The understanding admits of no condition among phenomena, which 
should itself be empirically unconditioned. But if we might conceive an 
intelligible condition, that is to say, a condition, not belonging itself as a link 
to the series of phenomena, of something conditioned (as a phenomenon) 
without in the least interrupting the series of empirical conditions, such a con- 
dition might be admitted as empirically unconditioned, without interfering 
with the empirical continuous regressus. 



432 Transcendental Dialectic 

III 

Solution of the Cosmological Ideas with Regard to the 
Totality of the Derivatio7i of Cosmical Events from their 
Causes 

We can conceive two kinds of causality only with 
reference to events, causality either of nature or of free- 
dom. The former is the connection of one state in the 
world of sense with a preceding state, on which it follows 
according to a rule. As the causality of phenomena de- 
pends on conditions of time, and as the preceding state, 
if it had always existed, could not have produced an effect, 
which first takes place in time, it follows that the causality 
of the cause of that which happens or arises must, accord- 
ing to the principle of the understanding, have itself arisen 
and require a cause. 

By freedom, on the contrary, in its cosmo- [p. 533] 
logical meaning, I understand the faculty of beginning 
a state spontaneously. Its causality, therefore, does not 
depend, according to the law of nature, on another cause, 
by which it is determined in time. In this sense freedom 
is a purely transcendental idea, which, first, contains noth- 
ing derived from experience, and, secondly, the object of 
which cannot be determined in any experience ; because it 
is a general rule, even of the possibility of all experience y 
that everything which happens has a cause, and that there- 
fore the causality also of the cause, which itself has 'hap- 
pened or arisen, must again have a cause. In this manner 
the whole field of experience, however far it may extend, 
has been changed into one great whole of nature. As, 
however, it is impossible in this way to arrive at an ab- 



Transcendental Dialectic 433 

solute totality of the conditions in causal relations, reason 
creates for itself the idea of spontaneity, or the power of 
beginning by itself, without an antecedent cause determin- 
ing it to action, according to the law of causal connec- 
tion. 

It is extremely remarkable, that the practical concept of 
freedom is founded on the transcendental idea of freedom, 
which constitutes indeed the real difficulty which at all 
times has surrounded the question of the possibility of 
freedom. Freedom, in its practical sense, is the [p. 534] 
independence of our (arbitrary) will from the coercion 
through sensuous impulses. Our (arbitrary) will is sensu- 
ous, so far as it is affected pathologically (by sensuous 
impulses) ; it is called animal {arbitrium brutum), if neces- 
sitated pathologically. The human will is certainly sensu- 
ous, an arbitrium sensitivicm, but not brutum, but liberum, 
because sensuous impulses do not necessitate its action, 
but there is in man a faculty of determination, indepen- 
dent of the necessitation through sensuous impulses. 

It can easily be seen that, if all causality in the world 
of sense belonged to nature, every event would be deter- 
mined in time through another, according to necessary 
laws. As therefore the phenomena, in determining the 
will, would render every act necessary as their natural 
effect, the annihilation of transcendental freedom would 
at the same time destroy all practical freedom. Practical 
freedom presupposes that, although something has not 
happened, it ought to have happened, and that its cause 
therefore had not that determining force among phenom- 
ena, which could prevent the causality of our will from 
producing, independently of those natural causes, and 
even contrary to their force and influence, something de- 

2F 



434 Transcendental Dialectic 

termined in the order of time, according to empirical laws, 
and from originating entirely by itself 'a series of events. 

What happens here is what happens generally [p. 535] 
in the conflict of reason venturing beyond the limits of 
possible experience, namely, that the problem is not physi- 
ological, but transcendental. Hence the question of the 
possibility of freedom concerns no doubt psychology ; but 
its solution, as it depends on dialectical arguments of pure 
reason, belongs entirely to transcendental philosophy. In 
order to enable that philosophy to give a satisfactory an- 
swer, which it cannot decline to do, I must first try to de- 
termine more accurately its proper procedure in this task. 

If phenomena were things by themselves, and therefore 
space and time forms of the existence of things by them- 
selves, the conditions together with the conditioned would 
always belong, as members, to one and the same series, 
and thus in our case also, the antinomy which is common 
to all transcendental ideas would arise, namely, that that 
series is inevitably too large or too small for the under- 
standing. The dynamical concepts of reason, however, 
which we have to discuss in this and the following section, 
have this peculiarity that, as they are not concerned with 
an object, considered as a quantity, but only with its ex- 
istence, we need take no account of the quantity of the 
series of conditions. All depends here only on [p. 536] 
the dynamical relation of conditions to the conditioned, 
so that in the question on nature and freedom we at once 
meet with the difficulty, whether freedom is indeed possi- 
ble, and whether, if it is possible, it can exist together with 
the universality of the natural law of causality. The ques- 
tion in fact arises, whether it is a proper disjunctive prop- 
osition to say, that every effect in the world must arise, 



Transcendental Dialectic 435 

either from nature, or from freedom, or whether both can- 
not coexist in the same event in different relations. The 
correctness of the principle of the unbroken connection 
of all events in the world of sense, according to unchange- 
able natural laws, is firmly established by the transcen- 
dental Analytic, and admits of no limitation. The question, 
therefore, can only be whether, in spite of it, freedom also 
can be found in the same effect which is determined by 
nature; or whether freedom is entirely excluded by that 
inviolable rule ? Here the common but fallacious suppo- 
sition of the absolute reality of phenomena shows at once 
its pernicious influence in embarrassing reason. For if 
phenomena are things by themselves, freedom cannot be 
saved. Nature in that case is the complete and sufficient 
cause determining every event, and its condition is always 
contained in that series of phenomena only which, together 
with their effect, are necessary under the law of nature. 
If, on the contrary, phenomena are taken for [p. 537] 
nothing except what they are in reality, namely, not things 
by themselves, but representations only, which are con- 
nected with each other according to empirical laws, they 
must themselves have causes, which are not phenomenal. 
Such an intelligible cause, however, is not determined 
with reference to its causality by phenomena, although its 
effects become phenomenal, and can thus be determined 
by other phenomena. That intelligible cause, therefore, 
with its causality, is outside the series, though its effects 
are to be found in the series of empirical conditions. The 
effect therefore can, with reference to its intelligible cause, 
be considered as free, and yet at the same time, with ref- 
erence to phenomena, as resulting from them according to 
the necessity of nature ; a distinction which, if thus repre- 



436 Transcendental Dialectic 

sented, in a general and entirely abstract form, may seem 
extremely subtle and obscure, but will become clear in its 
practical application. Here I only wished to remark that, 
as the unbroken connection of all phenomena in the con- 
text (woof) of nature, is an unalterable law, it would 
necessarily destroy all freedom, if we were to defend obsti- 
nately the reality of phenomena. Those, therefore, who 
follow the common opinion on this subject, have never 
been able to reconcile nature and freedom. 



Possibility of a Causality tli rough Freedom, in [p. 538] 
Harmony with the Universal Law of Natural Necessity 

Whatever in an object of the senses is not itself phe- 
nomenal, I call intelligible. If, therefore, what in the 
world of sense must be considered as phenomenal, pos- 
sesses in itself a faculty which is not the object of sensuous 
intuition, but through which it can become the cause of 
phenomena, the causality of that being may be considered 
from tivo sides, as intelligible in its action, as the causality 
of a thing by itself, and as sensible in the effects of the 
action, as the causality of a phenomenon in the world of 
sense. Of the faculty of such a being we should have to 
form both an empirical and an intellectual concept of its 
causality, both of which consist together in one and the 
same effect. This twofold way of conceiving the faculty 
of an object of the senses does not contradict any of the 
concepts which we have to form of phenomena and of a 
possible experience. For as all phenomena, not being 
things by themselves, must have for their foundation a 
transcendental object, determining them as mere repre- 
sentations, there is nothing to prevent us from attribut- 



Transcendental Dialectic 437 

ing to that transcendental object, besides the [p. 539] 
quality through which it becomes phenomenal, a causality 
also which is not phenomenal, although its effect appears 
in the phenomenon. Every efficient cause, however, must 
have a diameter, that is, a rule according to which it 
manifests its causality, and without which it would not 
be a cause. According to this we should have in every 
subject of the world of sense, first, an empirical character, 
through which its acts, as phenomena, stand with other 
phenomena in an unbroken connection, according to per- 
manent laws of nature, and could be derived from them 
as their conditions, and in connection with them form the 
links of one and the same series in the order of nature. 
Secondly, we should have to allow to it an intelligible 
character also, by which, it is true, it becomes the cause 
of the same acts as phenomena, but which itself is not 
subject to any conditions of sensibility, and never phe- 
nomenal. We might call the former the character of such 
a thing as a phenomenon, in the latter the character of 
the thing by itself. 

According to its intelligible character, this active sub- 
ject would not depend on conditions of time, for time is 
only the condition of phenomena, and not of things by 
themselves. In it no act would arise or perish, [p. 540] 
neither would it be subject therefore to the law of determi- 
nation in time and of all that is changeable, namely, that 
everything which happens must have its cause in the phe- 
nomena (of the previous state). In one word its causality, 
so far as it is intelligible, would not have a place in the 
series of empirical conditions by which the event is ren- 
dered necessary in the world of sense. It is true that 
that intelligible character could never be known imme- 



438 Transcendental Dialectic 

diately, because we cannot perceive anything, except so 
far as it appears, but it would nevertheless have to be 
conceived, according to the empirical character, as we 
must always admit in thought a transcendental object, as 
the foundation of phenomena, though we know nothing 
of what it is by itself. 

In its empirical character, therefore, that subject, as a 
phenomenon, would submit, according to all determining 
laws, to a causal nexus, and in that respect it would be 
nothing but a part of the world of sense, the effects of 
which, like every other phenomenon, would arise from 
nature without fail. As soon as external phenomena be- 
gan to influence it, and as soon as its empirical character, 
that is the law of its causality, had been known through 
experience, all its actions ought to admit of explanation, 
according to the laws of nature, and all that is requisite for 
its complete and necessary determination would be found 
in a possible experience. 

In its intelligible character, however (though [p. 541] 
we could only have a general concept of it), the same 
subject would have to be considered free from all influ- 
ence of sensibility, and from all determination through 
phenomena : and as in it, so far as it is a noumenon, 
nothing happens, and no change which requires dynamical 
determination of time, and therefore no connection with 
phenomena as causes, can exist, that active being would 
so far be quite independent and free in its acts from all 
natural necessity, which can exist in the world of sense 
only. One might say of it with perfect truth that it origi- 
nates its effects in the world of sense by itself, though the 
act does not begin in itself. And this would be perfectly 
true, though the effects in the world of sense need not 



Transcendental Dialectic 439 

therefore originate by themselves, because in it they are 
always determined previously through empirical conditions 
in the previous time, though only by means of the empiri- 
cal character (which is the phenomenal appearance of the 
intelligible character), and therefore impossible, except as 
a continuation of the series of natural causes. In this way 
freedom and nature, each in its complete signification, 
might exist together and without any conflict in the same 
action, according as we refer it to its intelligible or to its 
sensible cause. 

Explanation of the Cosmological Idea of Freedom [p. 542] 
in Connection with the General Necessity of Nature 

I thought it best to give first this sketch of the solution 
of our transcendental problem, so that the course which 
reason has to adopt in its solution might be more clearly 
surveyed. We shall now proceed to explain more fully 
the points on which the decision properly rests, an'd exam- 
ine each by itself. 

The law of nature, that everything which happens has a 
cause, — that the causality of that cause, that is, its activity 
(as it is anterior in time, and, with regard to an effect 
which has arisen, cannot itself have always existed, but 
must have happened at some time), must have its cause 
among the phenomena by which it is determined, and that 
therefore all events in the order of nature are empirically 
determined, this law, I say, through which alone phenom- 
ena become nature and objects of experience, is a law of 
the understanding, which can on no account be surrendered, 
and from which no single phenomenon can be exempted ; 
because in doing this we should place it outside all possible 
experience, separate from all objects of possible [p. 543] 



440 Transcendental Dialectic 

experience, and change it into a mere fiction of the mind 
or a cobweb of the brain. 

But although this looks merely like a chain of causes, 
which in the regressus to its conditions admits of no absolute 
totality, this difficulty does not detain us in the least, be- 
cause it has already been removed in the general criticism 
of the antinomy of reason when, starting from the series 
of phenomena, it aims at the unconditioned. Were we to 
yield to the illusion of transcendental realism, we should 
have neither nature nor freedom. The question therefore 
is, whether, if we recognise in the whole series of events 
nothing but natural necessity, we may yet regard the same 
event which on one side is an effect of nature only, on the 
other side, as an effect of freedom ; or whether there is a 
direct contradiction between these two kinds of causality? 

There can certainly be nothing among phenomenal 
causes that could originate a series absolutely and by 
itself. Every action, as a phenomenon, so far as it pro- 
duces an event, is itself an event, presupposing another 
state, in which its cause can be discovered ; and thus 
everything that happens is only a continuation of the 
series, and no beginning, happening by itself, is possible 
in it. Actions of natural causes in the succession of time 
are therefore themselves effects, which likewise [p. 544] 
presuppose causes in the series of time. A spontaneous 
and original action by which something takes place, which 
did not exist before, cannot be expected from the causal 
nexus of phenomena. 

But is it really necessary that, if effects are phenomena, 
the causality of their cause, which cause itself is phenom- 
enal, could be nothing but empirical ; or is it not possible, 
although for every phenomenal effect a connection with its 



Transcendental Dialectic 441 

cause, according to the laws of empirical causality, is cer- 
tainly required, that empirical causality itself could never- 
theless, without breaking in the least its connection with 
the natural causes, represent an effect of a non-empirical 
and intelligible causality, that is, of a caused action, orig- 
inal in respect to phenomena, and in so far not phenom- 
enal ; but, with respect to this faculty, intelligible, although, 
as a link in the chain of nature, to be regarded as entirely 
belonging to the world of sense ? 

We require the principle of the causality of phenomena 
among themselves, in order to be able to look for and to 
produce natural conditions, that is, phenomenal causes of 
natural events. If this is admitted and not weakened by 
any exceptions, the understanding, which in its empirical 
employment recognises in all events nothing but nature, 
and is quite justified in doing so, has really all [p. 545] 
that it can demand, and the explanations of physical phe- 
nomena may proceed without let or hindrance. The under- 
standing would not be wronged in the least, if we assumed, 
though it be a mere fiction, that some among the natural 
causes have a faculty which is intelligible only, and whose 
determination to activity does not rest on empirical condi- 
tions, but on mere grounds of the intellect, if only the phe- 
nomenal activity of that cause is in accordance with all the 
laws of empirical causality. For in this way the active 
subject, as causa phaenomenon, would be joined with nature 
through the indissoluble dependence of all its actions, and 
the noumenon J only of that subject (with all its phenomenal 
causality) would contain certain conditions which, if we 
want to ascend from the empirical to the transcendental 

1 It seems better to read noumenon instead of phenomenon. 



442 Transcendental Dialectic 

object, would have to be considered as intelligible only. 
For, if only we follow the rule of nature in that which 
may be the cause among phenomena, it is indifferent to us 
what kind of ground of those phenomena, and of their con- 
nection, may be conceived to exist in the transcendental 
subject, which is empirically unknown to us. This intel- 
ligible ground does not touch the empirical questions, but 
concerns only, as it would seem, the thought in the pure 
understanding ; and although the effects of that thought 
and action of the pure understanding may be dis- [p. 546] 
covered in the phenomena, these have nevertheless to be 
completely explained from their phenomenal cause, accord- 
ing to the laws of nature, by taking their empirical char- 
acter as the highest ground of explanation, and passing 
by the intelligible character, which is the transcendental 
cause of the other, as entirely unknown, except so far as 
it is indicated by the empirical, as its sensuous sign. Let 
us apply this to experience. Man is one among the phe- 
nomena of the world of sense, and in so far one of the 
natural causes the causality of which must be subject to 
empirical laws. As such he must therefore have an em- 
pirical character, like all other objects of nature. We 
perceive it through the forces and faculties which he 
shows in his actions and effects. In the lifeless or merely 
animal nature we see no ground for admitting any faculty, 
except as sensuously conditioned. Man, however, who 
knows all the rest of nature through his senses only, 
knows himself through mere apperception also, and this 
in actions and internal determinations, which he cannot 
ascribe to the impressions of the senses. Man is thus to 
himself partly a phenomenon, partly, however, namely 
with reference to certain faculties, a purely intelligible 



Transcendental Dialectic 443 

object, because the actions of these faculties cannot be 
ascribed to the receptivity of sensibility. We [p. 547] 
call these faculties understanding and reason. It is the 
latter, in particular, which is entirely distinguished from 
all empirically conditioned forces or faculties, because it 
weighs its objects according to ideas, and determines the 
understanding accordingly, which then makes an empirical 
use of its (by themselves, however pure) concepts. 

That our reason possesses causality, or that we at least 
represent to ourselves such a causality in it, is clear from 
the imperatives which, in all practical matters, we impose 
as rules on our executive powers. The ought expresses 
a kind of necessity and connection with causes, which 
we do not find elsewhere in the whole of nature. The 
understanding can know in nature only what is present, 
past, or future. It is impossible that anything in it ought 
to be different from what it is in reality, in all these rela- 
tions of time. Nay, if we only look at the course of 
nature, the ought has no meaning whatever. We cannot 
ask, what ought to be in nature, as little as we can ask, 
what qualities a circle ought to possess. We can only 
ask what happens in it, and what qualities that which 
happens has. 

This ought expresses a possible action, the ground of 
which cannot be anything but a mere concept ; while in 
every merely natural action the ground must [p. 548] 
always be a phenomenon. Now it is quite true that the 
action to which the ought applies must be possible under 
natural conditions, but these natural conditions do not 
affect the determination of the will itself, but only its 
effects and results among phenomena. There may be 
ever so many natural grounds which impel me to will and 



444 Transcendental Dialectic 

ever so many sensuous temptations, but they can never 
produce the ought, but only a willing which is always con- 
ditioned, but by no means necessary, and to which the 
ought, pronounced by reason, opposes measure, ay, pro- 
hibition and authority. Whether it be an object of the 
senses merely (pleasure), or of pure reason (the good), 
reason does not yield to the impulse that is given em- 
pirically, and does not follow the order of things, as they 
present themselves as phenomena, but frames for itself, 
with perfect spontaneity, a new order according to ideas 
to which it adapts the empirical conditions, and according 
to which it declares actions to be necessary, even though 
they have not taken place, and, maybe, never will take 
place. Yet it is presupposed that reason may have causality 
with respect to them, for otherwise no effects in experience 
could be expected to result from these ideas. 

Now let us take our stand here and admit it at least as 
possible, that reason really possesses causality [p. 549] 
with reference to phenomena. In that case, reason though 
it be, it must show nevertheless an empirical character, 
because every cause presupposes a rule according to which 
certain phenomena follow as effects, and every rule requires 
in the effects a homogeneousness, on which the concept of 
cause (as a faculty) is founded. This, so far as it is derived 
from mere phenomena, may be called the empirical char- 
acter, which is permanent, while the effects, according to 
a diversity of concomitant, and in part, restraining con- 
ditions, appear in changeable forms. 

Every man therefore has an empirical character of his 
(arbitrary) will, which is nothing but a certain causality of 
his reason, exhibiting in its phenomenal actions and effects 
a rule, according to which one may infer the motives of 



Transcendental Dialectic 445 

reason and its actions, both in kind and in degree, and 
judge of the subjective principles of his will. As that 
empirical character itself must be derived from phenomena, 
as an effect, and from their rule which is supplied by 
experience, all the acts of a man, so far as they are phe- 
nomena, are determined from his empirical character and 
from the other concomitant causes, according to the order 
of nature ; and if we could investigate all the manifesta- 
tions of his will to the very bottom, there would be not a 
single human action which we could not predict [p. 550] 
with certainty and recognise from its preceding conditions 
as necessary. There is no freedom therefore with refer- 
ence to this empirical character, . and yet it is only with 
reference to it that we can consider man, when we are 
merely observing, and, as is the case in anthropology, try- 
ing to investigate the motive causes of his actions physio- 
logically. 

If, however, we consider the same actions with refer- 
ence to reason, not with reference to speculative reason, 
in order to explain their origin, but solely so far as reason 
is the cause which produces them ; in one. word, if we com- 
pare actions with reason, with reference to practical pur- 
poses, we find a rule and order, totally different from the 
order of nature. For, from this point of view, everything, 
it may be, ought not to have happened, which according to 
the course of nature has happened, and according to its 
empirical grounds, was inevitable. And sometimes we 
find, or believe at least that we find, that the ideas of 
reason have really proved their causality with reference 
to human actions as phenomena, and that these actions 
have taken place, not because they were determined by 
empirical causes, but by the causes of reason. 



446 Transcendental Dialectic 

Now supposing one could say that reason [p. 551] 
possesses causality in reference to phenomena, could the 
action of reason be called free in that case, as it is accu- 
rately determined by the empirical character (the disposi- 
tion) and rendered necessary by it ? That character again 
is determined in the intelligible character (way of think- 
ing). The latter, however, we do not know, but signify 
only through phenomena, which in reality give us imme- 
diately a knowledge of the disposition (empirical charac- 
ter) only. 1 An action, so far as it is to be attributed to the 
way of thinking as its cause, does nevertheless not result 
from it according to empirical laws, that is, it is not 
preceded by the conditions of pure reason, but only by 
its effects in the phenomenal form of the internal sense. 
Pure reason, as a simple intelligible faculty, is not sub- 
ject to the form of time, or to the conditions of the suc- 
cession of time. The causality of reason in its intelligible 
character does not arise or begin at a certain time in order 
to produce an effect ; for in that case it would be subject 
to the natural law of phenomena, which deter- [p. 552] 
mines all causal -series in time, and its causality would 
then be nature and not freedom. What, therefore, we can 
say is, that if reason can possess causality with reference 
to phenomena, it is a faculty through which the sensuous 
condition of an empirical series of effects first begins. 
For the condition that lies in reason is not sensuous, and 



1 The true morality of actions (merit or guilt), even that of our own con- 
duct, remains therefore entirely hidden. Our imputations can refer to the 
empirical character only. How much of that may be the pure effect of free- 
dom, how much should be ascribed to nature only, and to the faults of tem- 
perament, for which man is not responsible, or its happy constitution (merito 
fortunae), no one can discover, and no one can judge with perfect justice. 



Transcendental Dialectic 447 

therefore does itself not begin. Thus we get what we 
missed in all empirical series, namely, that the condition of 
a successive series of events should itself be empirically 
unconditioned. For here the condition is really outside 
the series of phenomena (in the intelligible), and there- 
fore not subject to any sensuous condition, nor to any 
temporal determination through preceding causes. 

Nevertheless the same cause belongs also, in another 
respect, to the series of phenomena. Man himself is a 
phenomenon. His will has an empirical character, which 
is the (empirical) cause of all his actions. There is no 
condition, determining man according to this character, 
that is not contained in the series of natural effects and 
subject to their law, according to which there can be 
no empirically unconditioned causality of anything that 
happens in time. No given action therefore (as it can 
be perceived as a phenomenon only) can begin absolutely 
by itself. Of pure reason, however, we cannot [p. 553] 
say that the state in which it determines the will is pre- 
ceded by another in which that state itself is determined. 
For as reason itself is not a phenomenon, and not subject 
to any of the conditions of sensibility, there exists in it, 
even in reference to its causality, no succession of time, 
and the dynamical law of nature, which determines the 
succession of time according to rules, cannot be applied 
to it. 

Reason is therefore the constant condition of all free 
actions by which man takes his place in the phenomenal 
world. Every one of them is determined beforehand in 
his empirical character, before it becomes actual. With 
regard to the intelligible character, however, of which the 
empirical is only the sensuous schema, there is neither 



448 Transcendental Dialectic 

before nor after; and every action, without regard to the 
temporal relation which connects it with other phe- 
nomena, is the immediate effect of the intelligible char- 
acter of pure reason. That reason therefore acts freely, 
without being determined dynamically, in the chain of 
natural causes, by external or internal conditions, anterior 
in time. That freedom must then not only be regarded 
negatively, as independence of empirical conditions (for 
in that case the faculty of reason would cease to be a 
cause of phenomena), but should be determined positively 
also, as the faculty of beginning spontaneously a series of 
events. Hence nothing begins in reason itself, [p. 554] 
and being itself the unconditioned condition of every free 
action, reason admits of no condition antecedent in time 
above itself, while nevertheless its effect takes its begin- 
ning in the series of phenomena, though it can never 
constitute in that series an absolutely first beginning. 

In order to illustrate the regulative principle of reason 
by an example of its empirical application, not in order to 
confirm it (for such arguments are useless for transcen- 
dental propositions), let us take a voluntary action, for 
example, a malicious lie, by which a man has produced 
a certain confusion in society, and of which we first try 
to find out the motives, and afterwards try to determine 
how far it and its consequences may be imputed to the 
offender. With regard to the first point, one has first 
to follow up his empirical character to its very sources, 
which are to be found in wrong education, bad society, 
in part also in the viciousness of a natural disposition, and 
a nature insensible to shame, or ascribed to frivolity and 
heedlessness, not omitting the occasioning causes at the 
time. In all this the procedure is exactly the same as 



Transcendental Dialectic 449 

in the investigation of a series of determining causes of 
a given natural effect. But although one believes that 
the act was thus determined, one neverthe- [p. 555] 
less blames the offender, and not on account of his un- 
happy natural disposition, not on account of influencing 
circumstances, not even on acconnt of his former course 
of life, because one supposes one might leave entirely out 
of account what that course of life may have been, and 
consider the past series of conditions as having never 
existed, and the act itself as totally unconditioned by 
previous states, as if the offender had begun with it a 
new series of effects, quite by himself. This blame is 
founded on a law of reason, reason being considered as 
a cause which, independent of all the before-mentioned 
empirical conditions, would and should have determined 
the behaviour of the man otherwise. Nay, we do not 
regard the causality of reason as a concurrent agency 
only, but as complete in itself, even though the sensuous 
motives did not favour, but even oppose it. The action 
is imputed to a man's intelligible character. At the 
moment when he tells the lie, the guilt is entirely his ; 
that is, we regard reason, in spite of all empirical condi- 
tions of the act, as completely free, and the act has to 
be imputed entirely to a fault of reason. 

Such an imputation clearly shows that we imagine that 
reason is not affected at all by the influences of the senses, 
and that it does not change (although its manifestations, 
that is the mode in which it shows itself by its [p. 556] 
effects, do change) : that in it no state precedes as deter- 
mining a following state, in fact, that reason does not 
belong to the series of sensuous conditions which render 
phenomena necessary, according to laws of nature. Rea- 

2G 



450 Transcendental Dialectic 

son, it is supposed, is present in all the actions of man, 
in all circumstances of time, and always the same ; but it 
is itself never in time, never in a new state in which it 
was not before ; it is determining^ never determined. We 
cannot ask, therefore, why reason has not determined 
itself differently, but only why it has not differently deter- 
mined the phenomena by its causality. And here no answer 
is really possible. For a different intelligible character 
would have given a different empirical character, and if we 
say that, in spite of the whole of his previous course of 
life, the offender could have avoided the lie, this only 
means that it was in the power of reason, and that reason, 
in its causality, is subject to no phenomenal and temporal 
conditions, and lastly, that the difference of time, though 
it makes a great difference in phenomena and their rela- 
tion to each other, can, as these are neither things nor 
causes by themselves, produce no difference of action in 
reference to reason. 

We thus see that, in judging of voluntary [p. 557] 
actions, we can, so far as their causality is concerned, get 
only so far as the intelligible cause, but not beyond. We 
can see that that cause is free, that it determines as inde- 
pendent of sensibility, and therefore is capable of being 
the sensuously unconditioned condition of phenomena. 
To explain why that intelligible character should, under 
present circumstances, give these phenomena and this 
empirical character, and no other, transcends all the powers 
of our reason, nay, all its rights of questioning, as if we 
were to ask why the transcendental object of our external 
sensuous intuition gives us intuition in space only and no 
other. But the problem which we have to solve does not 
require us to ask or to answer such questions. Our 



Transcendental Dialectic 451 

problem was, whether freedom is contradictory to natural 
necessity in one and the same action : and this we have 
sufficiently answered by showing that freedom may have 
relation to a very different kind of conditions from those 
of nature, so that the law of the latter does not affect the 
former, and both may exist independent of, and undisturbed 
by, each other. 

ate ate _ jte jfc ate ate ate jig 

It should be clearly understood that, in what we have 
said, we had no intention of establishing the reality of 
freedom, as one of the faculties which contain [p. 558] 
the cause , of the phenomenal appearances in our world of 
sense. For not only would this have been no transcen- 
dental consideration at all, which is concerned with con- 
cepts only, but it could never have succeeded, because 
from experience we can never infer anything but what 
must be represented in thought according to the laws of 
experience. It was not even our intention to prove- X\\^ pos- 
sibility of freedom, for in this also we should not have suc- 
ceeded, because from mere concepts a priori we can never 
know the possibility of any real ground or any causality. 
We have here treated freedom as a transcendental idea 
only, which makes reason imagine that it can absolutely 
begin the series of phenomenal conditions through what is 
sensuously unconditioned, but by which reason becomes 
involved in an antinomy with its own laws, which it had 
prescribed to the empirical use of the understanding. 
That this antinomy rests on a mere illusion, and that 
nature does not contradict the causality of freedom, that 
was the only thing which we could prove, and cared to 
prove. 



452 Transcendental Dialectic 

IV [p. 559] 

Solution of the Cosmological Idea of the Totality of the De- 
pendence of Phenomena, with Regard to their Existence 
in General 

In the preceding article we considered the changes in 
the world of sense in their dynamical succession, every 
one being subordinate to another as its cause. Now, 
however, the succession of states is to serve only as our 
guide in order to arrive at an existence that might be the 
highest condition of all that is subject to change, namely, 
the necessary Being. We are concerned here, not with the 
unconditioned causality, but with the unconditioned exist- 
ence of the substance itself. Therefore the succession 
which we have before us is properly one of concepts and 
not of intuitions, so far as the one is the condition of the 
other. 

It is easy to see, however, that as everything compre- 
hended under phenomena is changeable, and therefore 
conditioned in its existence, there cannot be, in the whole 
series of dependent existence, any unconditioned link the 
existence of which might be considered as absolutely 
necessary, and that therefore, if phenomena were things 
by themselves, and their condition accordingly belonged 
with the conditioned always to one and the same series of 
intuitions, a necessary being, as the condition of [p. 560] 
the existence of the phenomena of the world of sense, 
could never exist. 

The dynamical regressus has this peculiar distinction as 
compared with the mathematical, that, as the latter is only 
concerned with the composition of parts in forming a whole 
or the division of a whole into its parts, the conditions of 



Transcendental Dialectic 453 

that series must always be considered as parts of it, and 
therefore as homogeneous and as phenomena, while in the 
dynamical regressus, where we are concerned, not with the 
possibility of an unconditioned whole, consisting of a num- 
ber of given parts, or of an unconditioned part belonging 
to a given whole, but with the derivation of a state from its 
cause, or of the contingent existence of the substance itself 
from the necessary substance, it is not required that the 
condition should form one and the same empirical series 
with the conditioned. 

There remains therefore to us another escape from this 
apparent antinomy : because both conflicting propositions 
might, under different aspects, be true at the same time. 
That is, all things of the world of sense might be entirely 
contingent, and have therefore an empirically conditioned 
existence only, though there might nevertheless be a non- 
empirical condition of the whole series, that is, an uncon- 
ditionally necessary being. For this, as an intelligible 
condition, would not belong to the series, as a link of it 
(not even as the highest link), nor would it render any 
link of that series empirically unconditioned, [p. 561] 
but would leave the whole world of sense, in all its mem- 
bers, in its empirically conditioned existence. This man- 
ner of admitting an unconditioned existence as the ground 
of phenomena would differ from the empirically uncondi- 
tioned causality (freedom), treated of in the preceding 
article, because, with respect to freedom, the thing itself, 
as cause (substantia phaenomenon), belonged to the series 
of conditions, and its causality only was represented as 
intelligible, while here, on the contrary, the necessary be- 
ing has to be conceived as lying outside the series of the 
world of sense (as ens extramiuidanuni), and as purely 



4$4 Transcendental Dialectic 

intelligible, by which alone it could be guarded against 
itself becoming subject to the law of contingency and 
dependence applying to all phenomena. 

The regulative principle of reason, with regard to our 
present problem, is therefore this, that everything in the 
world of sense has an empirically conditioned existence, 
and that in it there is never any unconditioned necessity 
with reference to any quality ; that there is no member 
in the series of conditions of which one ought not to 
expect, and as far as possible to seek, the empirical con- 
dition in some possible experience ; and that we are 
never justified in deriving any existence from a condition 
outside the empirical series, or in considering it as inde- 
pendent and self-subsistent in the series itself ; without 
however denying in the least that the whole [p. 562] 
series may depend on some intelligible being, which is 
free therefore from all empirical conditions, and itself 
contains rather the ground of the possibility of all those 
phenomena. 

By this we by no means intend to prove the uncondi- 
tionally necessary existence of such a being, or even to 
demonstrate the possibility of a purely intelligible condi- 
tion of the existence of the phenomena of the world of 
sense. But as on the one side we limit reason, lest it 
should lose the thread of the empirical condition and lose 
itself in transcendent explanations incapable of being repre- 
sented in concreto, thus, on the other side, we want to 
limit the law of the purely empirical use of the under- 
standing, lest it should venture to decide on the possibil- 
ity of things in general, and declare the intelligible to be 
impossible, because it has been shown to be useless for 
the explanation of phenomena. What is shown by this 



Transcendental Dialectic 



455 



is simply this, that the complete contingency of all things 
in nature and of all their (empirical) conditions, may well 
coexist with the arbitrary presupposition of a necessary, 
though purely intelligible condition, and that, as there is 
no real contradiction between these two views, they may 
well both be true. Granted even that such an absolutely 
necessary being, as postulated by the under- [p. 563] 
standing, is impossible in itself, we still maintain that this 
cannot be concluded from the general contingency and 
dependence of all that belongs to the world of sense, nor 
from the principle that we ought not to stop at any single 
member so far as it is contingent, and appeal to a cause 
outside the world. Reason follows its own course in its 
empirical, and again a peculiar course in its transcen- 
dental use. 

The world of sense contains nothing but phenomena, 
and these are mere representations which are always sen- 
suously conditioned. As our objects are never things by 
themselves, we need not be surprised that we are never 
justified in making a jump from any member of the sev- 
eral empirical series, beyond the connection of sensibility, 
as if they were things by themselves, existing apart from 
their transcendental ground, and which we might leave 
behind in order to seek for the cause of their existence 
outside them. This, no doubt, would have to be done in 
the end with contingent things^ but not with mere repre- 
sentations of things, the contingency of which is itself a 
phenomenon, and cannot lead to any other regressus but 
that which determines the phenomena, that is, which is 
empirical. To conceive, however, an intelligible ground 
of phenomena, that is, of the world of sense, and to con- 
ceive it as freed from the contingency of the latter, does 



456 Transcendental Dialectic 

not run counter either to the unlimited empirical regressus 
in the series of phenomena, nor to their general contin- 
gency. And this is really the only thing which [p. 564] 
we had to do in order to remove this apparent antinomy, 
and which could be done in this wise only. For if every 
condition of everything conditioned (according to its exist- 
ence) is sensuous, and therefore belongs to the series, that 
series is again conditioned (as shown in the antithesis of 
the fourth antinomy). Either therefore there would re- 
main a conflict with reason, which postulates the uncondi- 
tioned, or this would have to be placed outside the series, 
i.e. in the intelligible, the necessity of which neither re- 
quires nor admits of any empirical condition, and is there- 
fore, as regards phenomena, unconditionally necessary. 

The empirical use of reason (with regard to the condi- 
tions of existence in the world of sense) is not affected by 
the admission of a purely intelligible being, but ascends, 
according to the principle of a general contingency, from 
empirical conditions to higher ones, which again are 
empirical. This regulative principle, however, does not 
exclude the admission of an intelligible cause not compre- 
hended in the series, when we come to the pure use of 
reason (with reference to ends or aims). For in this 
case, an intelligible cause only means the transcendental, 
and, to us, unknown ground of the possibility of the sen- 
suous series in general, and the existence of this, inde- 
pendent of all conditions of the sensuous series, and, in 
reference to it, unconditionally, necessary, is by [p. 565] 
no means opposed to the unlimited contingency of the 
former, nor to the never-ending regressus in the series of 
empirical conditions. 



Transcendental Dialectic 457 



Concluding Remark on the Whole Antinomy of Pure 
Reason 

So long as it is only the totality of the conditions in the 
world of sense and the interest it can have to reason, that 
form the object of the concepts of our reason, our ideas 
are no doubt transcendental, but yet cosmological. If, 
however, we place the unconditioned (with which we are 
chiefly concerned) in that which is entirely outside the 
world of sense, therefore beyond all possible experience, 
our ideas become transcendent : for they serve not only for 
the completion of the empirical use of the understanding 
(which always remains an idea that must be obeyed, though 
it can never be fully carried out), but they separate them- 
selves entirely from it, and create to themselves objects 
the material of which is not taken from experience, and 
the objective reality of which does not rest on the comple- 
tion of the empirical series, but on pure concepts a priori. 
Such transcendent ideas have a merely intelligible object, 
which may indeed be admitted as a transcendental object, 
of which, for the rest, we know nothing, but for which, if 
we wish to conceive it as a thing determined by its inter- 
nal distinguishing predicates, we have neither [p. 566] 
grounds of possibility (as independent of all concepts of 
experience) nor the slightest justification on our side in 
admitting it as an object, and which, therefore, is a mere 
creation of our thoughts. Nevertheless that cosmological 
idea, which owes its origin to the fourth antinomy, urges 
us on to take that step. For the conditioned existence of 
all phenomena, not being founded in itself, requires us to 
look out for something different from all phenomena, that 
is, for an intelligible object in which there should be no 



458 Transcendental Dialectic 

more contingency. As, however, if we have once allowed 
ourselves to admit, outside the field of the whole of sensibil- 
ity, a reality existing by itself, phenomena can only be con- 
sidered as contingent modes of representing intelligible 
objects on the part of beings which themselves are intel- 
ligences, 1 nothing remains to us, in order to form some 
kind of concept of intelligible things, of which in them- 
selves we have not the slightest knowledge, but analogy, 
applied to the concepts of experience. As we know the 
contingent by experience only, but have here to deal with 
things which are not meant to be objects of experience, 
we shall have to derive our knowledge of them from what 
is necessary in itself, that is, from pure concepts of things 
in general. Thus the first step which we take [p. 567] 
outside the world of sense, obliges us to begin our new 
knowledge with the investigation of the absolutely neces- 
sary Being, and to derive from its concepts the concepts 
of all things, so far as they are intelligible only ; and this 
we shall attempt to do in the next chapter. 

1 After anzusehen, sind may be added for the sake of clearness, but it is 
often omitted in Kant's style. 



THE SECOND BOOK OF TRANSCEN- 
DENTAL DIALECTIC 

CHAPTER III 

THE IDEAL OF PURE REASON 

Section I 
Of the Ideal in General 

We have seen that without the conditions of sensibility, 
it is impossible to represent objects by means of the pure 
concepts of the understanding, because the conditions of 
their objective reality are absent, and they contain the 
mere form of thought only. If, however, we apply these 
concepts to phenomena, they can be represented in con- 
creto, because in the phenomena they have the material 
for forming concepts of experience, which are nothing but 
concepts of the understanding in concreto. Ideas, however, 
are still further removed from objective reality than the 
categories, because they can meet with no phenomenon in 
which they could be represented in concreto. They con- 
tain a certain completeness unattainable by any [p. 568] 
possible empirical knowledge, and reason aims in them at a 
systematical unity only, to which the empirically possible 
unity is to approximate, without ever fully reaching it. 

Still further removed from objective reality than the 
Idea, would seem to be what I call the Ideal, by which I 
mean the idea, not only in concreto, but in individuo, that 

459 



460 Transcendental Dialectic 

is, an individual thing determinable or even determined by 
the idea alone. 

Humanity (as an idea), in its complete perfection, im- 
plies not only all essential qualities belonging to human 
nature, which constitute our concept of it, enlarged to a 
degree of complete agreement with the highest aims that 
would represent our idea of perfect humanity, but every- 
thing also which, beside this concept, is required for the 
complete determination of the idea. For of all contra- 
dictory predicates one only can agree with the idea of the 
most perfect man. What to us is an ideal, was in Plato's 
language an Idea of a divine mind, an individual object 
present to its pure intuition, the most perfect of every 
kind of possible beings, and the archetype of all phenom- 
enal copies. 

Without soaring so high, we have to admit [p. 569] 
that human reason contains not only ideas, but ideals also, 
which though they have not, like those of Plato, creative, 
yet have certainly practical power (as regulative prin- 
ciples), and form the basis of the possible perfection of 
certain acts. Moral concepts are not entirely pure con- 
cepts of reason, because they rest on something empirical, 
pleasure or pain. Nevertheless, with regard to the prin- 
ciple by which reason imposes limits on freedom, which in 
itself is without laws, these moral concepts (with regard to 
their form at least) may well serve as examples of pure 
concepts of reason. Virtue and human wisdom in its per- 
fect purity are ideas, while the wise man (of the Stoics) is 
an ideal, that is, a man existing in thought only, but in 
complete agreement with the idea of wisdom. While the 
idea gives rules, the ideal serves as the archetype for the 
permanent determination of the copy ; and we have no 



Transcendental Dialectic 461 

other rule of our actions but the conduct of that divine 
man within us, with which we compare ourselves, and by 
which we judge and better ourselves, though we can never 
reach it. These ideals, though they cannot claim objective 
reality (existence), are not therefore to be considered as 
mere chimeras, but supply reason with an indispensable 
standard, because it requires the concept of that which is 
perfect of its kind, in order to estimate and [p. 570] 
measure by it the degree and the number of the defects in 
the imperfect. To attempt to realise the ideal in an 
example, that is, as a real phenomenon, as we might 
represent a perfectly wise man in a novel, is impossible, 
nay, absurd, and but little encouraging, because the 
natural limits, which are constantly interfering with the 
perfection in the idea, make all illusion in such an experi- 
ment impossible, and thus render the good itself in the idea 
suspicious and unreal. 

This is the case with the ideal of reason, which must 
always rest on definite concepts, and serve as rule and 
model, whether for imitation or for criticism. The case 
is totally different with those creations of our imagina- 
tion of which it is impossible to give an intelligible 
concept, or say anything, — which are in fact a kind of 
monogram, consisting of single lines without any apparent 
rule, a vague outline rather of different experiences than 
a definite image, such as painters and physiognomists 
pretend to carry in their heads, and of which they speak 
as a kind of vague shadow only of their creations and 
criticisms that can never be communicated to others. 
They may be termed, though improperly, ideals of sen- 
sibility, because they are meant to be the never-attain- 
able model of possible empirical intuitions, and yet fur- 



462 Transcendental Dialectic 

nish no rule capable of being explained or ex- [p. 571] 
amined. 

In its ideal, on the contrary, reason aims at a perfect 
determination, according to rules a priori, and it conceives 
an object throughout determinable according to principles, 
though without the sufficient conditions of experience, so 
that the concept itself is transcendent*. 



THE IDEAL OF PURE REASON 

Section II 

Of the Transcendental Ideal (Prototypon Transccndcntale) 

Every concept is, with regard to that which is not 
contained in it, undetermined and subject to the prin- 
ciple of dctcrminability, according to which of every two 
contradictorily opposite predicates, one only can belong 
to it. This rests on the principle of contradiction, and 
is therefore a purely logical principle, taking no account 
of any of the contents of our knowledge, and looking 
only to its logical form. 

Besides this everything is subject, in its possibility, 
to the principle of complete determination, according to 
which one of all the possible predicates of things, as com- 
pared with their opposites, must be applicable [p. 572] 
to it. This does not rest only on the principle of contra- 
diction, for it regards everything, not only in relation to 
two contradictory predicates, but in relation to the whole 
possibility, that is, to the whole of all predicates of things, 
and, presupposing these as a condition a priori, it repre- 
sents everything as deriving its own possibility from the 



Transcendental Dialectic 463 

share which it possesses in that whole possibility. 1 This 
principle of complete determination relates therefore to 
the content, and not only to the logical form. It is the 
principle of the synthesis of all predicates which are 
meant to form the complete concept of a thing, and not 
the principle of analytical representation only, by means 
of one of two contradictory predicates ; and it contains a 
transcendental presupposition, namely, that of the material 
for all possibility which is supposed to contain [p. 573] 
a priori the data for the particular possibility of everything. 
The proposition, that everything which exists is com- 
pletely determined, does not signify only that one of every 
pair of given contradictory predicates, but that one of all 
possible predicates must always belong to a thing, so that 
by this proposition predicates are not only compared with 
each other logically, but the thing itself is compared tran- 
scendentally with the sum total of all possible predicates. 
The proposition really means that, in order to know a 
thing completely, we must know everything that is pos- 
sible, and thereby determine it either affirmatively or 
negatively. This complete determination is therefore a 
concept which in co?icreto can never be represented in 
its totality, and is founded therefore on an idea which 
belongs to reason only, reason prescribing to the under- 
standing the rule of its complete application. 

1 According to this principle, therefore, everything is referred to a common 
correlate, that is, the whole possibility, which, if it (that is, the matter for all 
possible predicates) could be found in the idea of any single tiling, would 
prove an affinity of all possible things, through the identity of the ground of 
their complete determination. The determinability of any concept is subordi- 
nate to the universality (universalitas) of the principle of the excluded middle, 
while the determination of a thing is subordinate to the totality (universitas), 
or the sum total of all possible predicates. 



464 Transcendental Dialectic 

Now although this idea of the sum total of all possibility, 
so far as it forms the condition of the complete determina- 
tion of everything, is itself still undetermined with regard 
to its predicates, and is conceived by us merely as a sum 
total of all possible predicates, we find nevertheless on 
closer examination that this idea, as a fundamental con- 
cept, excludes a number of predicates which, being deriva- 
tive, are given by others, or cannot stand one [p. 574] 
by the side of the other, and that it is raised to a com- 
pletely a priori determined concept, thus becoming the 
concept of an individual object which is completely deter- 
mined by the mere idea, and must therefore be called an 
ideal of pure reason. 

If we consider all possible predicates not only logically, 
but transcendentally, that is, according to their content, 
which may be thought in them a priori, we find that 
through some we represent being, through others a mere 
not-being. The logical negation, which is merely indicated 
through the small word not, does in reality never apply to 
a concept, but only to its relation to another in a judg- 
ment, and is very far therefore from being sufficient to 
determine a concept with regard to its content. The ex- 
pression, not-mortal, can in no wise indicate that mere not- 
being if thereby represented in an object, but leaves the 
content entirely untouched. A transcendental negation, 
on the contrary, signifies not-being by itself, and is opposed 
to transcendental affirmation, or a something the concept 
of which in itself expresses being. It is called, therefore, 
reality (from res, a thing), because through it alone, and 
so far only as it reaches, are objects something, while the 
opposite negation indicates a mere want, and, if [p. 575] 
it stands by itself, represents the absence of everything. 



Transcende7ital Dialectic 465 

No one can definitely think a negation, unless he founds 
it on the opposite affirmation. A man born blind cannot 
frame the smallest conception of darkness, because he has 
none of light. The savage knows nothing of poverty, be- 
cause he does not know ease, and the ignorant has no 
conception of his ignorance, 1 because he has none of know- 
ledge, etc. All negative concepts are therefore derivative, 
and it is the realities which contain the data and, so 
to speak, the material, or the transcendental content, by 
which a complete determination of all things becomes 
possible. 

If, therefore, our reason postulates a transcendental 
substratum for all determinations, a substratum which 
contains, as it were, the whole store of material whence 
all possible predicates of things may be taken, we shall 
find that such a substratum is nothing but the idea of the 
sum total of reality {pmnitndo realitatis). In [p. 576] 
that case all true negations are nothing but limitations 
which they could not be unless there were the substratum 
of the unlimited (the All). 

By this complete possession of all reality we represent 
the concept of a thing by itself "as completely determined, 
and the concept of an ens realissimnm is the concept of 
individual being, because of all possible opposite predicates 
one, namely, that which absolutely belongs to being, is 
found in its determination. It is therefore a transcen- 
dental ideal which forms the foundations of the complete 



1 The observations and calculations of astronomers have taught us much 
that is wonderful; but the most important is, that they have revealed to us 
the abyss of our ignorance, which otherwise human reason could never have 
conceived so great. To meditate on this must produce a great change in the 
determination of the aims of our reason. 
2 H 



466 Transcendental Dialectic 

determination which is necessary for all that exists, and 
which constitutes at the same time the highest and complete 
condition of its possibility, to which all thought of objects, 
with regard to their content, must be traced back. It is at 
the same time the only true ideal of which human reason is 
capable, because it is in this case alone that a concept of a 
thing, which in itself is general, is completely determined 
by itself, and recognised as the representation of an in- 
dividual. 

The logical determination of a concept by reason is 
based upon a disjunctive syllogism in which the major 
contains a logical division (the division of the sphere of 
a general concept), while the minor limits that sphere to 
a certain part, and the conclusion determines the concept 
by that part. The general concept of a reality [p. 577] 
in general cannot be divided a priori, because without ex- 
perience we know no definite kinds of reality contained 
under that genus. Hence the transcendental major of the 
complete determination of all things is nothing but a rep- 
resentation of the sum total of all reality, and not only 
a concept which comprehends all predicates, according to 
their transcendental content, tinder itself, but within itself ; 
and the complete determination of everything depends on 
the limitation of this total of reality, of which some part is 
ascribed to the thing, while the rest is excluded from it, 
a procedure which agrees with the aut ant of a disjunctive 
major, and with the determination of the object through 
one of the members of that division in the minor. Thus 
the procedure of reason by which the transcendental ideal 
becomes the basis of the determination of all possible 
things, is analogous to that which reason follows in dis- 
junctive syllogisms, a proposition on which I tried before 



Tra?iscc?idental Dialectic 467 

to base the systematical division of all transcendental 
ideas, and according to which they are produced, as 
corresponding to the three kinds of the syllogisms of 
reason. 

It is self-evident that for that purpose, namely, in order 
simply to represent the necessary ajid complete deter- 
mination of things, reason does not presuppose [p. 578] 
the existence of a being that should correspond to the 
ideal, but its idea only, in order to derive from an uncon- 
ditioned totality of complete determination the condi- 
tioned one, that is the totality of something limited. 
Reason therefore sees in the ideal the prototypon of all 
things which, as imperfect copies (ectypa), derive the 
material of their possibility from it, approaching more 
or less nearly to it, yet remaining always far from reach- 
ing it. 

Thus all the possibility of things (or of the synthesis 
of the manifold according to their content) is considered 
as derivative, and the possibility of that only which in- 
cludes in itself all reality as original. For all negations 
(which really are the only predicates by which every- 
thing else is distinguished from the truly real being) are 
limitations only of a greater and, in the last instance, of 
the highest reality, presupposing it, and, according to 
their content, derived from it. All the manifoldness of 
things consist only of so many modes of limiting the 
concept of the highest reality that forms their common 
substratum, in the same way as all figures are only differ- 
ent modes of limiting endless space. Hence the object 
of its ideal which exists in reason only is called the orig- 
inal Being (ens originariutn) , and so far as it has nothing 
above it, the highest Being (ens summum), and so far 



468 Transcendental Dialectic 

as everything as conditioned is subject to it, the Being of 
all beings (ens cntiuni). All this however does not mean 
the objective relation of any real thing to other [p. 579] 
things, but of the idea to concepts, and leaves us in perfect 
ignorance as to the existence of a being of such super- 
lative excellence. 

Again, as we cannot say that an original being consists 
of so many derivative beings, because these in reality pre- 
suppose the former, and cannot therefore constitute it, 
it follows that the ideal of the original being must be 
conceived as simple. 

The derivation of all other possibility from that original 
being cannot therefore, if we speak accurately, be consid- 
ered as a limitation of its highest reality, and, as it were, a 
division of it — for in that case the original being would 
become to us a mere aggregate of derivative beings, which, 
according to what we have just explained, is impos- 
sible, though we represented it so in our first rough 
sketch. On the contrary, the highest reality would form 
the basis of the possibility of all things as a cause, and 
not as a sum total. The manifoldness of things would 
not depend on the limitation of the original being, but 
on its complete effect, and to this also would belong all 
our sensibility, together with all reality in phenomenal 
appearance, which could not, as an ingredient, belong 
to the idea of a supreme being. 

If we follow up this idea of ours and hypos- [p. 580] 
tasise it, we shall be able to determine the original being 
by means of the concept of the highest reality as one, 
simple, all sufficient, eternal, etc., in one word, determine 
it in its unconditioned completeness through all predica- 
ments. The concept of such a being is the concept of 



Transcendental Dialectic 469 

God in its transcendental sense, and thus, as I indicated 
above, the ideal of pure reason is the object of a tran- 
scendental theology. 

By such an employment of the transcendental idea, 
however, we should be overstepping the limits of its 
purpose and admissibility. Reason used it only, as being 
the concept of all reality, for a foundation of the complete 
determination of things in general, without requiring that 
all this reality should be given objectively and constitute 
itself a thing. This is a mere fiction by which we com- 
prehend and realise the manifold of our idea in one ideal, 
as a particular being. We have no right to do this, not 
even to assume the possibility of such an hypothesis ; nor 
do all the consequences which flow from such an ideal 
concern the complete determination of things in general, 
for the sake of which alone the idea was necessary, or 
influence it in the least. 

It is not enough to describe the procedure [p.' 581] 
of our reason and its dialectic, we must try also to dis- 
cover its sources, in order to be able to explain that illu- 
sion itself as a phenomenon of the understanding. The 
ideal of which we are speaking is founded on a natural, 
not on a purely arbitrary idea. I ask, therefore, how does 
it happen that reason considers all the possibility of 
things as derived from one fundamental possibility, 
namely, that of the highest reality, and then presupposes 
it as contained in a particular original being ? 

The answer is easily found in the discussions of the 
transcendental Analytic. The possibility of the objects 
of our senses is their relation to our thought, by which 
something (namely, the empirical form) can be thought 
a priori, while what constitutes the matter, the reality 



470 Transcendental Dialectic 

in the phenomena (all that corresponds to sensation) must 
be given, because without it it could not even be thought, 
nor its possibility be represented. An object of the 
senses can be completely determined only when it is 
compared with all phenomenal predicates, and represented 
by them either affirmatively or negatively. As, however, 
that which constitutes the thing itself (as a phenomenon), 
namely, the real, must be given, and as without this the 
thing could not be conceived at all, and as that in which 
the real of all phenomena is given is what we [p. 582] 
call the one and all comprehending experience, it is nec- 
essary that the material for the possibility of all objects 
of our senses should be presupposed as given in one 
whole, on the limitation of which alone the possibility 
of all empirical objects, their difference from each other, 
and their complete determination can be founded. And 
since no other objects can be given us but those of the 
senses, and nowhere but in the context of a possible 
experience, nothing can be an object to us, if it does not 
presuppose that whole of all empirical reality, as the con- 
dition of its possibility. Owing to a natural illusion, we 
are led to consider a principle which applies only to the 
objects of our senses, as a principle valid for all things, 
and thus to take the empirical principle of our concepts of 
the possibility of things as phenomena, by omitting this 
limitation, as a transcendental principle of the possibility 
of things in general. 

If afterwards we hypostasise this idea of the whole of 
all reality, this is owing to our changing dialectically the 
distributive unity of the empirical use of our understand- 
ing into the collective unity of an empirical whole, and 
then represent to ourselves this whole of phenomena as 



Transcendental Dialectic 471 

an individual thing, containing in itself all empirical reality. 
Afterwards, by means of the aforementioned tran- [p. 583] 
scendental subreption, this is taken for the concept of a 
thing standing at the head of the possibility of all things, 
and supplying the real conditions for their complete de- 
termination. 1 

THE IDEAL OF PURE REASON 
Section III 

Of the Arguments of Speculative Reason in Proof of the 
Existence of a Supreme Being 

Notwithstanding this urgent want of reason to presup- 
pose something, as a foundation for the complete deter- 
mination of the concepts of the understanding, reason 
nevertheless becomes too soon aware of the purely ideal 
and factitious character of such a supposition to allow 
itself to be persuaded by it alone to admit a [p. 584] 
mere creation of thought as a real being, unless it were 
forced by something else to seek for some rest in its 
regressus from the conditioned, which is given, to the 
unconditioned which, though in itself and according to its 
mere concept not given as real, can alone complete the 
series of conditions followed up to their causes. This is 

1 This ideal of the most real of all things, although merely a representation, 
is first realised, that is, changed into an object, then hypostasised, and lastly, 
by the natural progress of reason towards unity, as we shall presently show, 
personified; because the regulative unity of experience does not rest on the 
phenomena themselves (sensibility alone), but on the connection of the mani- 
fold, through the understanding (in an apperception*), so that the unity of the 
highest reality, and the complete determinability (possibility) of all things, 
seem to reside in a supreme understanding, and therefore in an intelligence. 



472 Transcendental Dialectic 

the natural course, taken by the reason of every, even the 
most ordinary, human being, although not every one can 
hold out in it. It does not begin with concepts, but with 
common experience, and thus has something really exist- 
ing for its foundation. That foundation however sinks, 
unless it rests upon the immoveable rock of that which is 
absolutely necessary ; and this itself hangs without a sup- 
port, if without and beneath it there be empty space, and 
everything be not filled by it, so that no room be left for a 
why, — in fact, if it be not infinite in reality. 

If we admit the existence of something, whatever it may 
be, we must also admit that something exists by necessity. 
For the contingent exists only under the condition of 
something else as its cause, and from this the same con- 
clusion leads us on till we reach a cause which is not con- 
tingent, and therefore unconditionally necessary. This is 
the argument on which reason founds its progress towards 
an original being. 

Now reason looks out for the concept of a [p. 585] 
being worthy of such a distinction as the unconditioned 
necessity of its existence, not in order to conclude a priori 
its existence from its concept (for if it ventured to do this, 
it might confine itself altogether to mere concepts, without 
looking for a given existence as their foundation), but only 
in order to find among all concepts of possible things one 
which has nothing incompatible with absolute necessity. 
For that something absolutely necessary must exist, is 
regarded as certain after the first conclusion. And after 
discarding everything else, as incompatible with that 
necessity, reason takes the one being that remains for the 
absolutely necessary being, whether its necessity can be 
comprehended, that is, derived from its concept alone, or 



Transcendental Dialectic 473 

not. Now the being the concept of which contains a 
therefore for every wherefore, which is in no point and no 
respect defective, and is sufficient as a condition every- 
where, seems, on that account, to be most compatible with 
absolute necessity, because, being in possession of all con- 
ditions of all that is possible, it does not require, nay, is 
not capable of any condition, and satisfies at least in this 
one respect the concept of unconditioned necessity more 
than any other concept which, because it is deficient and 
in need of completion, does not exhibit any such [p. 586] 
characteristic of independence from all further conditions. 
It is true that we ought not to conclude that what does 
not contain the highest and in every respect complete 
condition, must therefore be conditioned even in its 
existence ; yet it does not exhibit the only characteristic 
of unconditioned existence, by which reason is able to 
know any being as unconditioned by means of a concept 
a priori. 

The concept of a being of the highest reality (ens rea- 
lissimum) would therefore seem of all concepts of all pos- 
sible things to be the most compatible with the concept of 
an unconditionally necessary Being, and though it may 
not satisfy that concept altogether, yet no choice is left to 
us, and we are forced to keep to it, because we must not 
risk the existence of a necessary Being, and, if we admit 
it, can, in the whole field of possibility, find nothing that 
could produce better founded claims on such a distinction 
in existence. 

This therefore is the natural course of human reason. 
It begins by persuading itself of the existence of some 
necessary Being. In this being it recognises unconditioned 
existence. It then seeks for the concept of that which is 



474 Transcendental Dialectic 

independent of all condition, and finds it in that [p. 587] 
which is itself the sufficient condition of all other things, 
that is, in that which contains all reality. Now as the 
unlimited all is absolute unity, and implies the concept of 
a being, one and supreme, reason concludes that the 
Supreme Being, as the original cause of all things, must 
exist by absolute necessity. 

We cannot deny that this argument possesses a certain 
foundation, when we must come to a decision, that is, 
when, after having once admitted the existence of some 
one necessary Being, we agree that we must decide where 
to place it ; for in that case we could not make a better 
choice, or we have really no choice, but are forced to vote 
for the absolute unity of complete reality, as the source of 
all possibility. If, however, we are not forced to come to a 
decision, but prefer to leave the question open till our con- 
sent has been forced by the full weight of arguments, that 
is, if we only have to form a judgment of what we really 
do know, and what we only seem to know, then our for- 
mer conclusion does by no means appear in so favourable 
a light, and must appeal to favour in order to make up for 
the defects of its legal claims. 

For, if we accept everything as here stated, namely, first, 
that we may infer rightly from any given exist- [p. 588] 
ence (perhaps even my own only) the existence of an un- 
conditionally necessary Being, secondly, that I must con- 
sider a being which contains all reality and therefore also 
all condition, as absolutely unconditioned, and that there- 
fore the concept of the thing which is compatible with 
absolute necessity has thus been found, it follows by no 
means from this, that a concept of a limited being, which 
does not possess the highest reality, is therefore contra- 



Transcendental Dialectic 475 

dictory to absolute necessity. For, though I do not find 
in its concept the unconditioned which carries the whole 
of conditions with it, this does not prove that, for the same 
reason, its existence must be conditioned ; for I cannot say 
in a hypothetical argument, that if a certain condition is 
absent (here the completeness according to concepts), the 
conditioned also is absent. On the contrary, it will be 
open to us to consider all the rest of limited beings as 
equally unconditioned, although we cannot from the gen- 
eral concept which we have of them deduce their neces- 
sity. Thus this argument would not have given us the 
least concept of the qualities of a necessary Being, in fact 
it would not have helped us in the least. 

Nevertheless this argument retains a certain importance 
and authority, of which it cannot be at once deprived on 
account of this objective insufficiency. For sup- [p. 589] 
pose that there existed certain obligations, quite correct in 
the idea of reason, but without any reality in their applica- 
tion to ourselves, that is without any motives, unless we 
admitted a Supreme Being to give effect to practical laws, 
we should then be bound to follow the concepts which, 
though not objectively sufficient, are yet, according to the 
standard of our reason, preponderant, and more convincing 
than any others. The duty of deciding would here turn 
the balance against the hesitation of speculation by an 
additional practical weight; nay, reason would not be justi- 
fied, even before the most indulgent judge, if, under such 
urgent pleas, though with deficient insight, it had not fol- 
lowed its judgment, of which we can say at least, that we 
know no better. 

This argument, though it is no doubt transcendental, as 
based on the internal insufficiency of the contingent, is 



476 Transcendental Dialectic 

nevertheless so simple and natural, that the commonest 
understanding accepts it, if once led up to it. We see 
things change, arise and perish, and these, or at least 
their state, must therefore have a cause. Of [p. 590] 
every cause, however, that is given in experience, the 
same question must be asked. Where, therefore, could 
we more fairly place the last causality, except where there 
exists also the supreme causality, that is in that Being, 
which originally contains in itself the sufficient cause for 
every possible effect, and the concept of which can easily 
be realised by the one trait of an all-comprehending per- 
fection ? That supreme cause we afterwards consider as 
absolutely necessary, because we find it absolutely neces- 
sary to ascend to it, while there is no ground for going 
beyond it. Thus among all nations, even when still in a 
state of blind polytheism, we always see some sparks of 
monotheism, to which they have been led, not by medita- 
tion and profound speculation, but by the natural bent 
of the common understanding, which they gradually fol- 
lowed and comprehended. 

There are only three kinds of proofs of the existence 
of God from speculative reason. 

All the paths that can be followed to this end begin 
either from definite experience and the peculiar nature 
of the world of sense, known to us through experience, 
and ascend from it, according to the laws of causality, to 
the highest cause, existing outside the world ; or they 
rest on indefinite experience only, that is, on any exist- 
ence which is empirically given ; or lastly, they leave all 
experience out of account, and conclude, entirely a priori 
from mere concepts, the existence of a supreme [p. 591] 
cause. The first proof is the pJiysico-theological, the second 



Traiiscende7ital Dialectic 477 

the cosmological, the third the ontological proof. There 
are no more, and there can be no more. 

I shall show that neither on the one path, the empirical, 
nor on the other, the transcendental, can reason achieve 
anything, and that it stretches its wings in vain, if it tries 
to soar beyond the world of sense by the mere power of 
speculation. With regard to the order in which these 
three arguments should be examined, it will be the oppo- 
site of that, followed by reason in its gradual development, 
in which we placed them also at first ourselves. For we 
shall be able to show that, although experience gives the 
first impulse, it is the transcendental concept only which 
guides reason in its endeavours, and fixes the last goal 
which reason wishes to retain. I shall therefore begin 
with the examination of the transcendental proof, and see 
afterwards how far it may be strengthened by the addition 
of empirical elements. 

THE IDEAL OF PURE REASON [p. 592] 

Section IV 

Of the Impossibility of an Ontological Proof of the 
Existence of God 

It is easily perceived, from what has been said before, 
that the concept of an absolutely necessary Being is a con- 
cept of pure reason, that is, a mere idea, the objective 
reality of which is by no means proved by the fact that 
reason requires it. That idea does no more than point to 
a certain but unattainable completeness, and serves rather 
to limit the understanding, than to extend its sphere. It 
seems strange and absurd, however, that a conclusion of 



478 Transcendental Dialectic 

an absolutely necessary existence from a given existence 
in general should seem urgent and correct, and that yet 
all the conditions under which the understanding can form 
a concept of such a necessity should be entirely against 
us. 

People have at all times been talking of an absolutely 
necessary Being, but they have tried, not so much to under- 
stand whether and how a thing of that kind could even be 
conceived, as rather to prove its existence. No doubt a 
verbal definition of that concept is quite easy, if we say 
that it is something the non-existence of which is impos- 
sible. This, however, does not make us much [p. 593] 
wiser with reference to the conditions that make it neces- 
sary 1 to consider the non-existence of a thing as absolutely 
inconceivable. It is these conditions which we want to 
know, and whether by that concept we are thinking any- 
thing or not. For to use the word unconditioned, in order 
to get rid of all the conditions which the understanding 
always requires, when wishing to conceive something as 
necessary, does not render it clear to us in the least 
whether, after that, we are still thinking anything or per- 
haps nothing, by the concept of the unconditionally 
necessary. 

Nay, more than this, people have imagined that by a 
number of examples they had explained this concept, at 
first risked at haphazard, and afterwards become quite 
familiar, and that therefore all further inquiry regarding 
its intelligibility were unnecessary. It was said that 
every, proposition of geometry, such as, for instance, that 
a triangle has three angles, is absolutely necessary, and 

1 Read nothwendig instead of unmoglich. Noire. 



Transcendental Dialectic 479 

people began to talk of an object entirely outside the 
sphere of our understanding, as if they understood per- 
fectly well what, by that concept, they wished to predicate 
of it. 

But all these pretended examples are taken without ex- 
ception from judgments only, not from things, and their 
existence. Now the unconditioned necessity of judgments 
is not the same thing as an absolute necessity of things. 
The absolute necessity of a judgment is only a conditioned 
necessity of the thing, or of the predicate in the [p. 594] 
judgment. The above proposition did not say that three 
angles were absolutely necessary, but that under the con- 
dition of the existence of a triangle, three angles are given 
(in it) by necessity. Nevertheless, this pure logical neces- 
sity has exerted so powerful an illusion, that, after hav- 
ing formed of a thing a concept a priori so constituted 
that it seemed to include existence in its sphere, people 
thought they could conclude with certainty that, because 
existence necessarily belongs to the object of that concept, 
provided always that I accept the thing as given (existing), 
its existence also must necessarily be accepted (according 
to the rule of identity), and that the Being therefore must 
itself be absolutely necessary, because its existence is 
implied in a concept, which is accepted voluntarily only, 
and always under the condition that I accept the object 
of it as given. 

If in an identical judgment I reject the predicate and 
retain the subject, there arises a contradiction, and hence, 
I say, that the former belongs to the latter necessarily. 
But if I reject the subject as well as the predicate, there 
is no contradiction, because there is nothing left that can 
be contradicted. To accept a triangle and yet to reject 



480 Transcendental Dialectic 

its three angles is contradictory, but there is no contradic- 
tion at all in admitting the non-existence of the triangle 
and of its three angles. The same applies to the concept 
of an absolutely necessary Being. Remove its [p. 595] 
existence, and you remove the thing itself, with all its 
predicates, so that a contradiction becomes impossible. 
There is nothing external to which the contradiction could 
apply, because the thing is not meant to be externally 
necessary ; nor is there anything internal that could be 
contradicted, for in removing the thing out of existence, 
you have removed at the same time all its internal quali- 
ties. If you say, God is almighty, that is a necessary 
judgment, because almightiness cannot be removed, if you 
accept a deity, that is, an infinite Being, with the concept 
of which that other concept is identical. But if you say, 
God is not, then neither his almightiness, nor any other 
of his predicates is given ; they are all, together with the 
subject, removed out of existence, and therefore there is 
not the slightest contradiction in that sentence. 

We have seen therefore that, if I remove the predicate 
of a judgment together with its subject, there can never 
be an internal contradiction, whatever the predicate may 
be. The only way of evading this conclusion would be 
to say that there are subjects which cannot be removed 
out of existence, but must always remain. But this would 
be the same as to say that there exist absolutely necessary 
subjects, an assumption the correctness of which I have 
called in question, and the possibility of which you had 
undertaken to prove. For I cannot form to myself the 
smallest concept of a thing which, if it had been removed 
together with all its predicates, should leave be- [p. 596] 
hind a contradiction ; and except contradiction, I have 



Transcendental Dialectic 481 

no other test of impossibility by pure concepts a priori. 
Against all these general arguments (which no one can 
object to) you challenge me with a case, which you repre- 
sent as a proof by a fact, namely, that there is one, and 
this one concept only, in which the non-existence or the 
removal of its object would be self-contradictory, namely, 
the concept of the most real Being (ens realissimum). 
You say that it possesses all reality, and you are no doubt 
justified in accepting such a Being as possible. This for 
the present I may admit, though the absence of self-con- 
tradictoriness in a concept is far from proving the possi- 
bility of its object. 1 Now reality comprehends existence, 
and therefore existence is contained in the concept of a 
thing possible. If that thing is removed, the [p. 597] 
internal possibility of the thing would be removed, and 
this is self-contradictory. 

I answer: — Even in introducing into the concept of a 
thing, which you wish to think in its possibility only, the 
concept of its existence, under whatever disguise it may 
be, you have been guilty of a contradiction. If you were 
allowed to do this, you would apparently have carried your 
point ; but in reality you have achieved nothing, but 
have only committed a tautology. I simply ask you, 
whether the proposition, that this or that tiling (which, 



1 A concept is always possible, if it is not self-contradictory. This is the 
logical characteristic of possibility, and by it the object of the concept is dis- 
tinguished from the nihil negativum. But it may nevertheless be an empty 
concept, unless the objective reality of the synthesis, by which the concept is 
generated, has been distinctly shown. This, however, as shown above, must 
always rest on principles of possible experience, and not on the principle of 
analysis (the principle of contradiction). This is a warning against inferring 
at once from the possibility of concepts (logical) the possibility of things 
(real). 

21 



482 Transcendental Dialectic 

whatever it may be, I grant you as possible) exists, is an 
analytical or a synthetical proposition? If the former, 
then by its existence you add nothing to your thought 
of the thing ; but in that case, either the thought within 
you would be the thing itself, or you have presupposed 
existence, as belonging to possibility, and have according 
to your own showing deduced existence- from internal 
possibility, which is nothing but a miserable tautology. 
The mere word reality, which in the concept of a thing 
sounds different from existence in the concept of the pred- 
icate, can make no difference. For if you call all accept- 
ing or positing (without determining what it is) reality, you 
have placed a thing, with all its predicates, within the con- 
cept of the subject, and accepted it as real, and you do 
nothing but repeat it in the predicate. If, on the [p. 598] 
contrary, you admit, as every sensible man must do, that 
every proposition involving existence is synthetical, how 
can you say that the predicate of existence does not admit 
of removal without contradiction, a distinguishing property 
which is peculiar to analytical propositions only, the very 
character of which depends on it ? 

I might have hoped to put an end to this subtle argu- 
mentation, without many words, and simply by an accurate 
definition of the concept of existence, if I had not seen 
that the illusion, in mistaking a logical predicate for a real 
one (that is the predicate which determines a thing), resists 
all correction. Everything can become a logical predicate, 
even the subject itself may be predicated of itself, because 
logic takes no account of any contents of concepts. Deter- 
mination, however, is a predicate, added to the concept of 
the subject, and enlarging it, and it must not therefore be 
contained in it. 



Transcendental Dialectic 483 

Being is evidently not a real predicate, or a concept of 
something that can be added to the concept of a thing. 
It is merely the admission of a thing, and of certain deter- 
minations in it. Logically, it is merely the copula of a 
judgment. The proposition, God is almighty, contains 
two concepts, each having its object, namely, God and 
almightiness. The small word is, is not an addi- [p. 599] 
tional predicate, but only serves to put the predicate in 
relation to the subject. If, then, I take the subject (God) 
with all its predicates (including that of almightiness), and 
say, God is, or there is a God, I do not put a new predicate 
to the concept of God, but I only put the subject by itself, 
with all its predicates, in relation to my concept, as its 
object. Both must contain exactly the same kind of thing, 
and nothing can have been added to the concept, which 
expresses possibility only, by my thinking its object as 
simply given and saying, it is. And thus the real does 
not contain more than the possible. A hundred real 
dollars do not contain a penny more than a hundred possi- 
ble dollars. For as the latter signify the concept, the for- 
mer the object and its position by itself, it is clear that, in 
case the former contained more than the latter, my con- 
cept would not express the whole object, and would not 
therefore be its adequate concept. In my financial posi- 
tion no doubt there exists more by one hundred real dol- 
lars, than by their concept only (that is their possibility), 
because in reality the object is not only contained analyti- 
cally in my concept, but is added to my concept (which is 
a determination of my state), synthetically ; but the con- 
ceived hundred dollars are not in the least increased 
through the existence which is outside my concept. 

By whatever and by however many predicates [p. 600] 



484 Transcendental DiaLctic 

I may think a thing (even in completely determining it), 
nothing is really added to it, if I add that the thing exists. 
Otherwise, it would not be the same that exists, but some- 
thing more than was contained in the concept, and I could 
not say that the exact object of my concept existed. Nay, 
even if I were to think in a thing all reality, except one, 
that one missing reality would not be supplied by my say- 
ing that so defective a thing exists, but it would exist with 
the same defect with which I thought it ; or what exists 
would be different from what I thought. If, then, I try 
to conceive a being, as the highest reality (without any 
defect), the question still remains, whether it exists or not. 
For though in my concept there may be wanting nothing 
of the possible real content of a thing in general, some- 
thing is wanting in its relation to my whole state of think- 
ing, namely, that the knowledge of that object should be 
possible a posteriori also. And here we perceive the 
cause of our difficulty. If we were concerned with an 
object of our senses, I could not mistake the existence of 
a thing for the mere concept of it ; for by the concept the 
object is thought as only in harmony with the general 
conditions of a possible empirical knowledge, while by its 
existence it is thought as contained in the whole content 
of experience. Through this connection with the content 
of the whole experience, the concept of an object [p. 601] 
is not in the least increased ; our thought has only received 
through it one more possible perception. If, however, we 
are thinking existence through the pure category alone, 
we need not wonder that we cannot find any characteristic 
to distinguish it from mere possibility. 

Whatever, therefore, our concept of an object may con- 
tain, we must always step outside it, in order to attribute 



Transcc7idc7ital Dialectic 48 5 

to it existence. With objects of the senses, this takes 
place through their connection with any one of my per- 
ceptions, according to empirical laws; with objects of pure 
thought, however, there is no means of knowing their ex- 
istence, because it would have to be known entirely a pri- 
ori, while our consciousness of every kind of existence, 
whether immediately by perception, or by conclusions 
which connect something with perception, belongs entirely 
to the unity of experience, and any existence outside that 
field, though it cannot be declared to be absolutely impos- 
sible, is a presupposition that cannot be justified by any- 
thing. 

The concept of a Supreme Being is, in many respects, 
a very useful idea, but, being an idea only, it is quite in- 
capable of increasing, by itself alone, our know- [p. 602] 
ledge with regard to what exists. It cannot even do so 
much as to inform us any further as to its possibility. 
The analytical characteristic of possibility, which consists 
in the absence of contradiction in mere positions (reali- 
ties), cannot be denied to it ; but the connection of all real 
properties in one and the same thing is a synthesis the 
possibility of which we cannot judge a priori because 
these realities are not given to us as such, and because, 
even if this were so, no judgment whatever takes place, it 
being necessary to look for the characteristic of the pos- 
sibility of synthetical knowledge in experience only, to 
which the object of an idea can never belong. Thus we 
see that the celebrated Leibniz is far from having achieved 
what he thought he had, namely, to understand a priori 
the possibility of so sublime an ideal Being. 

Time and labour therefore are lost on the famous onto- 
logical (Cartesian) proof of the existence of a Supreme 



486 Transcendental Dialectic 

Being from mere concepts ; and a man might as well im- 
agine that he could become richer in knowledge by mere 
ideas, as a merchant in capital, if, in order to improve his 
position, he were to add a few noughts to his cash account. 

THE IDEAL OF PURE REASON [p. 603] 

Section V 

Of the Impossibility of a Cosmological Proof of the Ex- 
istence of God 

It was something quite unnatural, and a mere innovation 
of scholastic wisdom, to attempt to pick out of an entirely 
arbitrary idea the existence of the object corresponding 
to it. Such an attempt would never have been made, if 
there had not existed beforehand a need of our reason of 
admitting for existence in general something necessary, 
to which we may ascend and in which we may rest ; and 
if, as that necessity must be unconditioned and a priori 
certain, reason had not been forced to seek a concept 
which, if possible, should satisfy such a demand and give 
us a knowledge of an existence entirely a priori. Such a 
concept was supposed to exist in the idea of an ens realis- 
simnm, and that idea was therefore used for a more defi- 
nite knowledge of that, the existence of which one had 
admitted or been persuaded of independently, namely, of 
the necessary Being. This very natural procedure of 
reason was carefully concealed, and instead of ending with 
that concept, an attempt was made to begin with it, and 
thus to derive from it the necessity of existence, which it 
was only meant to supplement. Hence arose [p. 604] 
that unfortunate ontological proof, which satisfies neither 



Transcendental Dialectic 487 

the demands of our natural and healthy understanding, 
nor the requirements of the schools. 

The cosmological proof , which we have now to examine, 
retains the connection of absolute necessity with the high- 
est reality, but instead of concluding, like the former, from 
the highest reality necessity in existence, it concludes from 
the given unconditioned necessity of any being, its un- 
limited reality. It thus brings everything at least into 
the groove of a natural, though I know not whether of a 
really or only apparently rational syllogism, which carries 
the greatest conviction, not only for the common, but also 
for the speculative understanding, and has evidently drawn 
the first outline of all proofs of natural theology, which 
have been followed at all times, and will be followed in 
future also, however much they may be hidden and dis- 
guised. We shall now proceed to exhibit and to examine 
this cosmological proof which Leibniz calls also the proof 
a contingentia mundi. 

It runs as follows : If there exists anything, there must 
exist an absolutely necessary Being also. Now I, at least, 
exist ; therefore there exists an absolutely necessary Being. 
The minor contains an experience, the major the conclusion 
from experience in general to the existence of [p. 605] 
the necessary. 1 This proof therefore begins with experi- 
ence, and is not entirely a priori, or ontological ; and, as 
the object of all possible experience is called the world, 
this proof is called the cosmological proof. As it takes 

1 This conclusion is too well known to require detailed exposition. It 
rests on the apparently transcendental law of causality in nature, that everything 
contingent has its cause, which, if contingent again, must likewise have a 
cause, till the series of subordinate causes ends in an absolutely necessary 
cause, without which it could not be complete. 



488 Transcendental Dialeetie 

no account of any peculiar property of the objects of expe- 
rience, by which this world of ours may differ from any 
other possible world, it is distinguished, in its name also, 
from the physico-theological proof, which employs as argu- 
ments, observations of the peculiar property of this our 
world of sense. 

The proof then proceeds as follows : The necessary 
Being can be determined in one way only, that is, by one 
only of all possible opposite predicates ; it must therefore 
be determined completely by its own concept. Now, 
there is only one concept of a thing possible, which a 
priori completely determines it, namely, that of the ens 
realissiminn. It follows, therefore, that the concept of the 
ens realissi})iiim is the only one by which a necessary Being 
can be thought, and therefore it is concluded [p. 606] 
that a highest Being exists by necessity. 

There are so many sophistical propositions in this cos- 
mological argument, that it really seems as if specu- 
lative reason had spent all her dialectical skill in order 
to produce the greatest possible transcendental illusion. 
Before examining it, we shall draw up a list of them, by 
which reason has put forward an old argument disguised 
as a new one, in order to appeal to the agreement of two 
witnesses, one supplied by pure reason, the other by expe- 
rience, while in reality there is only one, namely, the first, 
who changes his dress and voice in order to be taken for a 
second. In order to have a secure foundation, this proof 
takes its stand on experience, and pretends to be different 
from the ontological proof, which places its whole confi- 
dence in pure concepts a priori only. The cosmological 
proof, however, uses that experience only in order to make 
one step, namely, to the existence of a necessary Being in 



Transcendental Dialectic 489 

general. What properties that Being may have, can never 
be learnt from the empirical argument, and for that pur- 
pose reason takes leave of it altogether, and tries to find 
out, from among concepts only, what properties an abso- 
lutely necessary Being ought to possess, i.e. which among 
all possible things contains in itself the requisite [p. 607] 
conditions (requisita) of absolute necessity. This requisite 
is believed by reason to exist in the concept of an ens 
realissimum only, and reason concludes at once that this 
must be the absolutely necessary Being. In this con- 
clusion it is simply assumed that the concept of a being of 
the highest reality is perfectly adequate to the concept of 
absolute necessity in existence ; so that the latter might 
be concluded from the former. This is the same proposi- 
tion as that maintained in the ontological argument, and 
is simply taken over into the cosmological proof, nay 5 
made its foundation, although the intention was to avoid 
it. For it is clear that absolute necessity is an existence 
from mere concepts. If, then, I say that the concept of 
the ens realissimum is such a concept, and is the only con- 
cept adequate to necessary existence, I am bound to admit 
that the latter may be deduced from the former. The 
whole conclusive strength of the so-called cosmological 
proof rests therefore in reality on the ontological proof 
from mere concepts, while the appeal to experience is 
quite superfluous, and, though it may lead us on to the 
concept of absolute necessity, it cannot demonstrate it 
with any definite object. For as soon as we intend to do 
this, we must at once abandon all experience, and try to 
find out which among the pure concepts may contain 
the conditions of the possibility of an absolutely [p. 608] 
necessary Being. But if in this way the possibility of 



490 Transcendental Dialectic 

such a Being has been perceived, its existence also has 
been proved : for what we are really saying is this, that 
under all possible things there is one which carries with 
it absolute necessity, or that this Being exists with absolute 
necessity. 

Sophisms in arguments are most easily discovered, if 
they are put forward in a correct scholastic form. This 
we shall now proceed to do. 

If the proposition is right, that every absolutely necessary 
Being is, at the same time, the most real Being (and this 
is the nervus probandi of the cosmological proof), it must, 
like all affirmative judgments, be capable of conversion, at 
least per accidens. This would give us the proposition 
that some entia realissima arc at the same time absolutely 
necessary beings. One ens rcalissimum, however, does 
not differ from any other on any point, and what applies 
to one, applies also to all. In this case, therefore, I may 
employ absolute conversion, and say, that every ens rea- 
lissimum is a necessary Being. As this proposition is de- 
termined by its concepts a priori only, it follows that the 
mere concept of the etis realissimum must carry with it 
its absolute necessity ; and this, which was maintained by 
the ontological proof, and not recognised by the cosmo- 
logical, forms really the foundation of the conclusions 
of the latter, though in a disguised form. [p. 609] 

We thus see that the second road taken by speculative 
reason, in order to prove the existence of the highest 
Being, is not only as illusory as the first, but commits in 
in addition an ignoratio elenchi, promising to lead us by 
a new path, but after a short circuit bringing us back to 
the old one, which we had abandoned for its sake. 

I said before that a whole nest of dialectical assump- 



Transcendental Dialectic 491 

tions was hidden in that cosmological proof, and that tran- 
scendental criticism might easily detect and destroy it. I 
shall here enumerate them only, leaving it to the experience 
of the reader to follow up the fallacies and remove them. 

We find, first, the transcendental principle of inferring 
a cause from the accidental. This principle, that every- 
thing contingent must have a cause, is valid in the world 
of sense only, and has not even a meaning outside it. For 
the purely intellectual concept of the contingent cannot 
produce a synthetical proposition like that of causality, 
and the principle of causality has no meaning and no 
criterion of its use, except in the world of sense, while 
here it is meant to help us beyond the world of sense. 

Secondly. The inference of a first cause, [p. 610] 
based on the impossibility of an infinite ascending series 
of given causes in this world of sense, — an inference 
which the principles of the use of reason do not allow us 
to draw even in experience, while here we extend that 
principle beyond experience, whither that series can never 
be prolonged. 

Thirdly. The false self-satisfaction of reason with 
regard to the completion of that series, brought about 
by removing in the end every kind of condition, without 
which, nevertheless, no concept of necessity is possible, 
and by then, when any definite concepts have become 
impossible, accepting this as a completion of our concept. 

Fourthly. The mistaking the logical possibility of a 
concept of all united reality (without any internal contra- 
diction) for the transcendental, which requires a principle 
for the practicability of such a synthesis, such principle 
however being applicable to the field of possible experience 
only, etc. 



492 Transcendental Dialectic 

The trick of the cosrnological proof consists only in 
trying to avoid the proof of the existence of a necessary 
Being a priori by mere concepts. Such a proof would 
have to be ontological, and of this we feel ourselves quite 
incapable. For this reason we take a real existence (of 
any experience whatever), and conclude from it, as well 
as may be, some absolutely necessary condition of it. In 
that case there is no necessity for explaining its possi- 
bility, because, if it has been proved that it [p. 611] 
exists, the question as to its possibility is unnecessary. If 
then we want to determine that necessary Being more 
accurately, according to its nature, we do not seek what is 
sufficient to make us understand from its concept the 
necessity of its existence. If we could do this, no empiri- 
cal presupposition would be necessary. No, we only seek 
the negative condition {conditio sine qua non), without 
which a Being would not be absolutely necessary. Now, 
in every other kind of syllogisms leading from a given 
effect to its cause, this might well be feasible. In our 
case, however, it happens unfortunately that the condition 
which is required for absolute necessity exists in one single 
Being only, which, therefore, would have to contain in its 
concept all that is required for absolute necessity, and that 
renders a conclusion a priori, with regard to such neces- 
sity, possible. I ought therefore to be able to reason 
conversely, namely, that everything is absolutely neces- 
sary, if that concept (of the highest reality) belongs to it. 
If I cannot do this (and I must confess that I cannot, if 
I wish to avoid the ontological proof), I have suffered 
shipwreck on my new course, and have come back again 
from where I started. The concept of the highest Being 
may satisfy all questions a priori which can be asked 



Transcendental Dialectic 493 

regarding the internal determinations of a thing, and it is 
therefore an ideal, without an equal, because the general 
concept distinguishes it at the same time as an [p. 612] 
individual being among all possible things. But it does 
not satisfy the really important question regarding its own 
existence ; and if some one who admitted the existence of 
a necessary Being were to ask us which of all things in 
the world could be regarded as such, we could not answer : 
This here is the necessary Being. 

It may be allowable to admit the existence of a Being 
entirely sufficient to serve as the cause of all possible 
effects, simply in order to assist reason in her search for 
unity of causes. But to go so far as to say that stick a 
Being exists necessarily, is no longer the modest language 
of an admissible hypothesis, but the bold assurance of 
apodictic certainty; for the knowledge of that which is 
absolutely necessary must itself possess absolute necessity. 

The whole problem of the transcendental Ideal 'is this, 
either to find a concept compatible with absolute neces- 
sity, or to find the absolute necessity compatible with the 
concept of anything. If the one is possible, the other must 
be so also, for reason recognises that only as absolutely 
necessary which is necessary according to its concept. 
Both these tasks baffle our attempts at satisfying our 
understanding on this point, and likewise our [p. 613] 
endeavours to comfort it with regard to its impotence. 

That unconditioned necessity, which we require as the 
last support of all things, is the true abyss of human 
reason. Eternity itself, however terrible and sublime it 
may have been depicted by Haller, is far from producing 
the same giddy impression, for it only measures the dura- 
tion of things, but does not support them. We cannot 



494 Transcendental Dialectic 

put off the thought, nor can vvc support it, that a Being, 
which we represent to ourselves as the highest among all 
possible beings, should say to himself, I am from eternity 
to eternity, there is nothing beside me, except that which 
is something through my will, — but whence am If Here 
all sinks away from under us, and the highest perfection, 
like the smallest, passes without support before the eyes 
of speculative reason, which finds no difficulty in making 
the one as well as the other to disappear without the 
slightest impediment. 

Many powers of nature, which manifest their existence 
by certain effects, remain perfectly inscrutable to us, 
because we cannot follow them up far enough by obser- 
vation. The transcendental object, which forms the 
foundation of all phenomena, and with it the ground of 
our sensibility having this rather than any other supreme 
conditions, is and always will be inscrutable. The thing 
no doubt is given, but it is incomprehensible, [p. 614] 
An ideal of pure reason, however, cannot be called in- 
scrutable, because it cannot produce any credentials of its 
reality beyond the requirement of reason to perfect all 
synthetical unity by means of it. As, therefore, it is not 
even given as an object that can be thought, it cannot 
be said to be, as such, inscrutable ; but, being a mere 
idea, it must find in the nature of reason its place and its 
solution, and in that sense be capable of scrutiny. For 
it is the very essence of reason that we are able to give 
an account of all our concepts, opinions, and assertions 
either on objective or, if they are a mere illusion, on sub- 
jective grounds. 



Transcendental Dialectic 405 

Discovery and Explanation of the Dialectical Illusion in 
all Transcendental Proofs of the Existence of a Neces- 
sary Being 

Both proofs, hitherto attempted, were transcendental, 
that is, independent of empirical principles. For although 
the cosmological proof assumes for its foundation an expe- 
rience in general, it does not rest on any particular qual- 
ity of it, but on pure principles of reason, with reference 
to an existence given by the empirical consciousness in 
general, and abandons even that guidance in order to 
derive its support from pure concepts only. [p. 615] 
What then in these transcendental proofs is the cause of 
the dialectical, but natural, illusion which connects the 
concepts of necessity and of the highest reality, and 
realises and hypostasises that which can only be an idea ? 
What is the cause that renders it inevitable to admit 
something as necessary in itself among existing things, 
and yet makes us shrink back from the existence of such 
a Being as from an abyss ? What is to be done that 
reason should understand itself on this point, and, escap- 
ing from the wavering state of hesitatingly approving or 
disapproving, acquire a calm insight into the matter? 

It is surely extremely strange that, as soon as we sup- 
pose that something exists, we cannot avoid the con- 
clusion that something exists necessarily. On this quite 
natural, though by no means, therefore, certain conclu- 
sion, rests the whole cosmological argument. On the 
other side, I may take any concept of anything, and I 
find that its existence has never to be represented by me 
as absolutely necessary, nay, that nothing prevents me, 
whatever may exist, from thinking its non-existence. I 
may, therefore, have to admit something necessary as the 



496 Transcendental Dialectic 

condition of existing things in general, but I need not 
think any single thing as necessary in itself. In other 
words I can never complete the regressus to the [p. 616] 
conditions of existence without admitting a necessary 
Being, but I can never begin with such a Being. 

If, therefore, I am obliged to think something neces- 
sary for all existing things, and at the same time am not 
justified in thinking of anything as in itself necessary, the 
conclusion is inevitable : that necessity and contingency 
do not concern things themselves, for otherwise there 
would be a contradiction, and that therefore neither of 
the two principles can be objective ; but that they may 
possibly be subjective principles of reason only, according 
to which, on one side, we have to find for all that is given 
as existing, something that is necessary, and thus never 
to stop except when we have reached an a priori com- 
plete explanation ; while on the other we must never 
hope for that completion, that is, never admit anything 
empirical as unconditioned, and thus dispense with its 
further derivation. In that sense both principles as 
purely heuristic and regulative, and affecting the formal 
interests of reason only, may well stand side by side. 
For the one tells us that we ought to philosophise on 
nature as if there was a necessary first cause for every- 
thing that exists, if only in order to introduce systemati- 
cal unity into our knowledge, by always looking for such an 
idea as an imagined highest cause. The other [p. 617] 
warns us against mistaking any single determination 
concerning 'the existence of things for such a highest 
cause, i.e. for something absolutely necessary, and bids 
us to keep the way always open for further derivation, 
and to treat it always as conditioned. If, then, every- 



Transcendental Dialectic 497 

thing that is perceived in things has to be considered 
by us as only conditionally necessary, nothing that is 
empirically given can ever be considered as absolutely 
necessary. 

It follows from this that the absolutely necessary must 
be accepted as outside the world, because it is only 
meant to serve as a principle of the greatest possible 
unity of phenomena, of which it is the highest cause, 
and that it can never be reached in the world, because 
the second rule bids you always to consider all empirical 
causes of that unity as derived. 

The philosophers of antiquity considered all form in 
nature as contingent, but matter, according to the judg- 
ment of common reason, as primitive and necessary. If, 
however, they had considered matter, not relatively as 
the substratum of phenomena, but as existing by itself, 
the idea of absolute necessity would have vanished at 
once, for there is nothing that binds reason absolutely to 
that existence, but reason can at any time and without con- 
tradiction remove it in thought, and it was in [p. 618] 
thought only that it could claim absolute necessity. The 
ground of this persuasion must therefore have been a cer- 
tain regulative principle. And so it is ; for extension and 
impermeability (which together constitute the concept of 
matter) furnish the highest empirical principle of the 
unity of phenomena, and possess, so far as this principle is 
empirically unconditioned, the character of a regulative 
principle. Nevertheless, as every determination of matter, 
which constitutes its reality, and hence the impermeability 
of matter also, is an effect (action) which must have a cause, 
and therefore be itself derived, matter is not adequate to 
the idea of a necessary Being, as a principle of all derived 

2K 



498 Transcendental Dialectic 

unity, because every one of its real qualities is derived 
and, therefore, conditionally necessary only, so that it 
could be removed, and with it would be removed the 
whole existence of matter. If this were not so, we should 
have reached the highest cause of unity, empirically, 
which is forbidden by the second regulative principle. 
It follows from all this that matter and everything in 
ereneral that belongs to the world are not fit for the 
idea of a necessary original Being, as a mere principle 
of the greatest empirical unity, but that we must place 
it outside the world. In that case there is no reason 
why we should not simply derive the phenomena of the 
world and their existence from other phenomena, as if 
there were no necessary Being at all, while at the same 
time we might always strive towards the completeness 
of that derivation, just as if such a Being, as the [p. 619] 
highest cause, were presupposed. 

The ideal of the Supreme Being is therefore, according 
to these remarks, nothing but a regulative principle of 
reason, which obliges us to consider all connection in 
the world as if it arose from an all-sufficient necessary 
cause, in order to found on it the rule of a systematical 
unity necessary according to general laws for the explana- 
tion of the world ; it does not involve the assertion of an 
existence necessary by itself. It is impossible, however, 
at the same time, to escape from a transcendental subrcp- 
tioy which leads us to represent that formal principle as 
constitutive, and to think that unity as hypostasised. It 
is the same with space. Space, though it is only a prin- 
ciple of sensibility, yet serves originally to make all forms 
possible, these being only limitations of it. For that very 
reason, however, it is mistaken for something absolutely 



Transcendental Dialectic 499 

necessary and independent, nay, for an object a priori 
existing in itself. It is the same here, and as this sys- 
tematical unity of nature can in no wise become the 
principle of the empirical use of our reason, unless we 
base it on the idea of an ens realissimum as the highest 
cause, it happens quite naturally that we thus represent 
that idea as a real object, and that object again, as it is 
the highest condition, as necessary. Thus a regulative 
principle has been changed into a constitutive [p. 620] 
principle, which substitution becomes evident at once 
because, as soon as I consider that highest Being, which 
with regard to the world was absolutely (unconditionally) 
necessary, as a thing by itself, that necessity cannot be 
conceived, and can therefore have existed in my reason 
as a formal condition of thought only, and not as a 
material and substantial condition of existence. 

THE IDEAL OF PURE REASON 

Section VI 

Of the Impossibility of the P hysico-theological Proof 

If, then, neither the concept of things in general, nor 
the experience of any existence hi general, can satisfy our 
demands, there still remains one way open, namely, to try 
whether any definite experience, and consequently that of 
things in the world as it is, their constitution and dis- 
position, may not supply a proof which could give us the 
certain conviction of the existence of a Supreme Being. 
Such a proof we should call pliysico-theological. If that, 
however, should prove impossible too, then it is clear 
that no satisfactory proof whatever, from merely specula- 



500 



Transcendental Dialectic 



tive reason, is possible, in support of the existence of a 
Being, corresponding to our transcendental idea. 

After what has been said already, it will be [p. 621] 
easily understood that we may expect an easy and com- 
plete answer to this question. For how could there ever 
be an experience that should be adequate to an idea? It 
is the very nature of an idea that no experience can ever 
be adequate to it. The transcendental idea of a necessary 
and all-sufficient original Being is so overwhelming, so 
high above everything empirical, which is always condi- 
tioned, that we can never find in experience enough mate- 
rial to fill such a concept, and can only grope about among 
things conditioned, looking in vain for the unconditioned, 
of which no rule of any empirical synthesis can ever give 
us an example, or even show the way towards it. 

If the highest Being should stand itself in that chain of 
conditions, it would be a link in the series, and would, 
exactly like the lower links, above which it is placed, 
require further investigation with regard to its own still 
higher cause. If, on the contrary, we mean to separate it 
from that chain, and, as a purely intelligible Being, not 
comprehend it in the series of natural causes, what bridge 
is then open for reason to reach it, considering that all 
rules determining the transition from effect to cause, nay, 
all synthesis and extension of our knowledge in general, 
refer to nothing but possible experience, and therefore to 
the objects of the world of sense only, and are [p. 622] 
valid nowhere else ? 

This present world presents to us so immeasurable a 
stage of variety, order, fitness, and beauty, whether we 
follow it up in the infinity of space or in its unlimited 
division, that even with the little knowledge which our 



Transcendental Dialectic 501 

poor understanding has been able to gather, all language, 
with regard to so many and inconceivable wonders, loses 
its vigour, all numbers their power of measuring, and all 
our thoughts their necessary determination ; so that our 
judgment of the whole is lost in a speechless, but all the 
more eloquent astonishment. Everywhere we see a chain 
of causes and effects, of means and ends, of order in birth 
and death, and as nothing has entered by itself into the 
state in which we find it, all points to another thing as 
its cause. As that cause necessitates the same further 
enquiry, the whole universe would thus be lost in the 
abyss of nothing, unless we admitted something which, 
existing by itself, original and independent, outside the 
chain of infinite contingencies, should support it, and, as 
the cause of its origin, secure to it at the same time its 
permanence. Looking at all the things in the world, 
what greatness shall we attribute to that highest cause ? 
We do not know the whole contents of the world, still less 
can we measure its magnitude by a comparison [p. 623] 
with all that is possible. But, as with regard to causality, 
we cannot do without a last and highest Being, why 
should we not fix the degree of its perfection beyond every- 
thing else that is possible f This we can easily do, though 
only in the faint outline of an abstract concept, if we 
represent to ourselves all possible perfections united in 
it as in one substance. Such a concept would agree with 
the demand of our reason, which requires parsimony in 
the number of principles ; it would have no contradictions 
in itself, would be favourable to the extension of the 
employment of reason in the midst of experience, by 
guiding it towards order and system, and lastly, would 
never be decidedly opposed to any experience. 



5o: 



Transcendental Dialectic 



This proof will always deserve to be treated with respect. 
It is the oldest, the clearest, and most in conformity 
with human reason. It gives life to the study of nature, 
deriving its own existence from it, and thus constantly 
acquiring new vigour. 

It reveals aims and intention, where our own obser- 
vation would not by itself have discovered them, and 
enlarges our knowledge of nature by leading us towards 
that peculiar unity the principle of which exists outside 
nature. This knowledge reacts again on its cause, namely, 
the transcendental idea, and thus increases the [p. 624] 
belief in a supreme Author to an irresistible conviction. 

It would therefore be not only extremely sad, but 
utterly vain to attempt to diminish the authority of that 
proof. Reason, constantly strengthened by the powerful 
arguments that come to hand by themselves, though they 
are no doubt empirical only, cannot be discouraged by any 
doubts of subtle and abstract speculation. Roused from 
every inquisitive indecision, as from a dream, by one 
glance at the wonders of nature and the majesty of the 
cosmos, reason soars from height to height till it reaches 
the highest, from the conditioned to conditions, till it 
reaches the supreme and unconditioned Author of all. 

But although we have nothing to say against the 
reasonableness and utility of this line of argument, 
but wish, on the contrary, to commend and encourage 
it, we cannot approve of the claims which this proof 
advances to apodictic certainty, and to an approval on 
its own merits, requiring no favour, and no help from 
any other quarter. It cannot injure the good cause, if 
the dogmatical language of the overweening sophist is 
toned down to the moderate and modest statements of 



Transcendental Dialectic 503 

a faith which does not require unconditioned submission, 
yet is sufficient to give rest and comfort. I therefore 
maintain that the physico-theological proof can never 
establish by itself alone the existence of a [p. 625] 
Supreme Being, but must always leave it to the ontolog- 
ical proof (to which it serves only as an introduction), 
to supply its deficiency ; so that, after all, it is the onto- 
logical proof which contains the only possible argument 
(supposing always that any speculative proof is possible), 
and human reason can never do without it. 

The principal points of the physico-theological proof 
are the following. 1st. There are everywhere in the 
world clear indications of an intentional arrangement 
carried out with great wisdom, and forming a whole 
indescribably varied in its contents and infinite in extent. 

2n dly. The fitness of this arrangement is entirely 
foreign to the things existing in the world, and belongs 
to them contingently only ; that is, the nature of differ- 
ent things could never spontaneously, by the combina- 
tion of so many means, co-operate towards definite aims, 
if these means had not been selected and arranged on 
purpose by a rational disposing principle, according to 
certain fundamental ideas. 

3rdly. There exists, therefore, a sublime and wise cause 
(or many), which must be the cause of the w'orld, not only 
as a blind and all-powerful nature, by means of uncon- 
scious fecundity, but as an intelligence, by freedom. 

4thly. The unity of that cause may be inferred with 
certainty from the unity of the reciprocal rela- [p. 626] 
tion of the parts of the world, as portions of a skilful edi- 
fice, so far as our experience reaches, and beyond it, with 
plausibility, according to- the principles of analogy. 



C04 Transcendental Dialectic 

Without wishing to argue, for the sake of argument 
only, with natural reason, as to its conclusion in inferring 
from the analogy of certain products of nature with the 
works of human art, in which man does violence to nature, 
and forces it not to follow its own aims, but to adapt it- 
self to ours (that is, from the similarity of certain products 
of nature with houses, ships, and watches), in inferring 
from this, I say, that a similar causality, namely, under- 
standing and will, must be at the bottom of nature, and 
in deriving the internal possibility of a freely acting nature 
(which, it may be, renders all human art and even human 
reason possible; from another though superhuman art — 
a kind of reasoning, which probably could not stand the 
severest test of transcendental criticism ; we are willing 
to admit, nevertheless, that if we have to name such a 
cause, we cannot do better than to follow the analogy of 
such products of human design, which are the only ones 
of which we know completely both cause and effect. 
There would be no excuse, if reason were to surrender a 
causality which it knows, and have recourse to obscure 
and indemonstrable principles of explanation, which it 
does not know. 

According to this argument, the fitness and harmony 
existing in so many works of nature might prove [p. 627] 
the contingency of the form, but not of the matter, that 
is, the substance in the world, because, for the latter pur- 
pose, it would be necessary to prove in addition, that the 
things of the world were in themselves incapable of such 
order and harmony, according to general laws, unless 
there existed, even in their substance, the product of a 
supreme wisdom. For this purpose, very different argu- 
ments would be required from those derived from the 



Transcendental Dialectic 505 

analogy of human art. The utmost, therefore, that could 
be established by such a proof would be an arcJiitcct of 
the world, always very much hampered by the quality of 
the material with which he has to work, not a creator, 
to whose idea everything is subject. This would by no 
means suffice for the purposed aim of proving an all- 
sufficient original Being. If we wished to prove the con- 
tingency of matter itself, we must have recourse to a 
transcendental argument, and this is the very thing which 
was to be avoided. 

The inference, therefore, really proceeds from the order 
and design that can everywhere be observed in the world, 
as an entirely contingent arrangement, to the existence of 
a cause, proportionate to it. The concept of that cause 
must therefore teach us something quite definite about it, 
and can therefore be no other concept but that of a Being 
which possesses all might, wisdom, etc., in one word, 
all perfection of an all-sufficient Being. The [p. 628] 
predicates of a very great, of an astounding, of an immeas- 
urable might and virtue give us no definite concept, and 
never tell us really what the thing is by itself. They are 
only relative representations of the magnitude of an object, 
which the observer (of the world) compares with himself 
and his own power of comprehension, and which would be 
equally grand, whether we magnify the object, or reduce 
the observing subject to smaller proportions in reference 
to it. Where we are concerned with the magnitude (of 
the perfection) of a thing in general, there exists no defi- 
nite concept, except that which comprehends all possible 
perfection, and only the all {pmnitudo) of reality is thor- 
oughly determined in the concept. 

Now I hope that no one would dare to comprehend the 



506 Transcendental Dialectic 

relation of that part of the world which he has observed 
(in its extent as well as in its contents) to omnipotence, 
the relation of the order of the world to the highest wis- 
dom, and the relation of the unity of the world to the abso- 
lute unity of its author, etc. Physico-theology, therefore, 
can never give a definite concept of the highest cause of 
the world, and is insufficient, therefore, as a principle of 
theology, which is itself to form the basis of religion. 

The step leading to absolute totality is entirely impos- 
sible on the empirical road. Nevertheless, that step is 
taken in the physico-theological proof. How then has this 
broad abyss been bridged over ? [p. 629] 

The fact is that, after having reached the stage of ad- 
miration of the greatness, the wisdom, the power, etc. of 
the Author of the world, and seeing no further advance 
possible, one suddenly leaves the argument carried on by 
empirical proofs, and lays hold of that contingency which, 
from the very first, was inferred from the order and design 
of the world. The next step from that contingency leads, 
by means of transcendental concepts only, to the existence 
of something absolutely necessary, and another step from 
the absolute necessity of the first cause to its completely 
determined or determining concept, namely, that of an all- 
embracing reality. Thus we see that the physico-theolog- 
ical proof, baffled in its own undertaking, takes suddenly 
refuge in the cosmological proof, and as this is only the 
ontological proof in disguise, it really carries out its orig- 
inal intention by means of pure reason only ; though it so 
strongly disclaimed in the beginning all connection with 
it, and professed to base everything on clear proofs from 
experience. 

Those who adopt the physico-theological argument have 



Transcendental Dialectic 507 

no reason to be so very coy towards the transcendental 
mode of argument, and with the conceit of enlightened 
observers of nature to look down upon them as the cob- 
webs of dark speculators. If they would only examine 
themselves, they would find that, after they had advanced 
a good way on the soil of nature and experience, and 
found themselves nevertheless as much removed [p. 630] 
as ever from the object revealed to their reason, they 
suddenly leave that soil, to enter into the realm of pure 
possibilities, where on the wings of ideas they hope to 
reach that which had withdrawn itself from all their 
empirical investigations. Imagining themselves to be on 
firm ground after that desperate leap, they now proceed to 
expand the definite concept which they have acquired, they 
do not know how, over the whole field of creation; and 
they explain the ideal, which was merely a product of 
pure reason, by experience, though in a very poor way, and 
totally beneath the dignity of the object, refusing all the 
while to admit that they have arrived at that knowledge 
or supposition by a very different road from that of expe- 
rience. 

Thus we have seen that the physico-theological proof 
rests on the cosmological, and the cosmological on the 
ontological proof of the existence of one original Being as 
the Supreme Being ; and, as besides these three, there is 
no other path open to speculative reason, the ontological 
proof, based exclusively on pure concepts of reason, is the 
only possible one, always supposing that any proof of a 
proposition, so far transcending the empirical use of the 
understanding, is possible at all. 



508 Transcendental Dialectic 

THE IDEAL OF PURE REASON [p. 631] 
Section VII 

Criticism of all Theology based on Speculative Principles 

of Reason 

If by Theology we understand the knowledge of the 
original Being, it is derived either from reason only (theo- 
logia rationales), or from revelation (revelata). The for- 
mer thinks its object either by pure reason and through 
transcendental concepts only (ens originariunt, rcalissimum, 
ens eutiuui), and is then called transcendental theology, or 
by a concept, borrowed from the nature (of our soul), as 
the highest intelligence, and ought then to be called natural 
theology. Those who admit a transcendental theology only 
are called Deists, those who admit also a natural theology 
Theists. The former admit that we may know the exist- 
ence of an original Being by mere reason, but that our 
concept of it is transcendental only, as of a Being which 
possesses all reality, but a reality that cannot be further 
determined. The latter maintain that reason is capable of 
determining that object more accurately in analogy with 
nature, namely, as a Being which, through understanding 
and freedom, contains within itself the original ground of 
all other things. The former admits a cause of the [p. 632] 
world only (whether through the necessity of its nature or 
through freedom, remains undecided), the latter an author 
of the world. 

Transcendental theology, again, either derives the exist- 
ence of the original Being from an experience in general 
(without saying anything about the world, to which it be- 
longs), and is then called Cosmotheology ; or it believes 



Transce?idental Dialectic 509 

that it can know its existence, without the help of any ex- 
perience whatsoever, and by mere concepts, and is then 
called Ontotlieology. 

Natural theology infers the qualities and the existence 
of an author of the world from the constitution, the order, 
and the unity, which are seen in this world, in which two 
kinds of causality with their rules must be admitted, namely, 
nature and freedom. It ascends from this world to the 
highest intelligence as the principle either of all natural or 
of all moral order and perfection. In the former case it 
is called Physico-theology, in the other Ethico-theology} 

As we are accustomed to understand by the concept of 
God, not only a blindly working eternal nature, as the root 
of all things, but a Supreme Being, which, through under- ] 
standing and freedom, is supposed to be the [p. 633] 
author of all things, and as it is this concept alone in 
which we really take an interest, one might strictly deny 
to the Deist all belief in God, and allow him only the 
maintaining of an original Being, or a supreme cause. 
But as no one, simply because he does not dare to assert, 
ought to be accused of denying a thing, it is kinder and 
juster to say, that the Deist believes in a God, but the 
TJieist in a living God (summa i7itellige7itia). We shall 
now try to discover the possible sources of all these 
attempts of reason. 

I shall not do more, at present, than define theoretical 
knowledge as one by which I know what there is, practical 
knowledge as one by which I represent to myself what 
ought to be. Hence the theoretical use of reason is that 

1 Not theological Ethics; for these contain moral laws, which presuppose 
the existence of a supreme ruler of the world, while Ethico-theology is the 
conviction of the existence of a Supreme Being, founded on moral laws. 



510 Transcendental Dialectic 

by which I know a priori (as necessary) that something is, 
while the practical use of reason is that by which I know 
a priori what ought to be. If then it is certain, beyond 
the possibility of doubt, that something is, or that some- 
thing ought to be, though both are conditioned, then a 
certain definite condition of it may be either absolutely 
necessary or presupposed only as possible and contingent. 
In the former case, the condition is postulated {per t/icsin), 
in the latter supposed (per liypotJiesin). As there are 
practical laws, which are absolutely necessary (the moral 
laws), it follows, if they necessarily presuppose [p. 634] 
any existence as the condition of the possibility of their 
obligatory power, that the existence of that condition must 
be postulated, because the conditioned, from which we infer 
that condition, has been recognised a priori as absolutely 
necessary. On a future occasion we shall show that the 
moral laws not only presuppose the existence of a Supreme 
Being, but that, as they are in other respects absolutely 
necessary, they postulate it by right, though of course 
practically only. For the present we leave this mode of 
argument untouched. 

If we only speak of that which is, not of that which 
ought to be, the conditioned given to us in experience is 
always conceived as contingent, and the condition belong- 
ing to it can therefore not be known as absolutely neces- 
sary, but serves only as a relatively necessary, or rather 
needf?cl, though in itself an a priori arbitrary supposition 
for a rational understanding of the conditioned. If, there- 
fore, we wish to know in our theoretical knowledge the 
absolute necessity of a thing, this could only be done from 
concepts a priori, and never as of a cause in reference to 
an existence which is given in experience. 



Transcendental Dialectic 5 1 1 

I call a theoretical knowledge speculative, if it relates to 
an object, or such concepts of an object, which we can 
never reach in any experience. It is opposed to our know- 
ledge of nature, which relates to no other objects [p. 635] 
or predicates of them except those that can be given in a 
possible experience. 

From something that happens (the empirically contin- 
gent) as an effect, to infer a cause, is a principle of natural, 
though not of speculative knowledge. For if we no longer 
use it as a principle involving the condition of possible 
experience, and, leaving out everything that is empirical, 
try to apply it to the contingent in general, there does not 
remain the smallest justification of such a synthetical prop- 
osition, showing how from something which is, there can 
be a transition to something totally different, which we 
call cause ; nay, in such purely speculative application, the 
concepts both of cause and of the contingent lose all 
meaning, the objective reality of which would be made 
intelligible in the concrete. 

If from the existence of tilings in the world we infer 
their cause, we are using reason not naturally, but specu- 
latively. Naturally, reason refers not the things them- 
selves (substances), but only that which happens, their 
states, as empirically contingent, to some cause ; but it 
could know speculatively only that a substance itself 
(matter) is contingent in its existence. And even if we 
were thinking only of the form of the world, the [p. 636] 
manner of its composition and the change of this composi- 
tion, and tried to infer from this a cause totally different 
from the world, this would be again a judgment of specula- 
tive reason only; because the object here is not an object 
of any possible experience. In this case the principle of 



512 . Transcendental Dialectic 

causality, which is valid within the field of experience only, 
and utterly useless, nay, even meaningless, outside it, 
would be totally diverted from its proper destination. 

What I maintain then is, that all attempts at a purely 
speculative use of reason, with reference to theology, are 
entirely useless and intrinsically null and void, while the 
principles of their natural use can never lead to any the- 
ology, so that unless we depend on moral laws, or are guided 
by them, there cannot be any theology of reason. For all 
synthetical principles of the understanding are applicable 
immanently only, i.e. within its own sphere, while, in order 
to arrive at the knowledge of a Supreme Being, we must 
use them transcendentally, and for this our understanding 
is not prepared. If the empirically valid law of causality 
is to conduct us to the original Being, that Being must 
belong to the chain of objects of experience, and in that case 
it would, like all phenomena, be itself conditioned. And 
even if that sudden jump beyond the limits of [p. 637] 
experience, according to the dynamical law of the relation 
of effects to their causes, could be allowed, what concept 
could we gain by this proceeding ? Certainly no concept 
of a Supreme Being, because experience never presents to 
us the greatest of all possible effects, to bear witness of its 
cause. If we claim to be allowed, only in order to leave 
no void in our reason, to supply this defect in the complete 
determination of that cause by the mere idea of the highest 
perfection and of original necessity, this may possibly be 
granted as a favour, but can never be demanded on the 
strength of an irresistible proof. The physico-theological 
proof, as connecting speculation with intuition, might pos- 
sibly therefore be used in support of other proofs (if they 
existed) ; it cannot, however, finish the task for itself, but 



Transcendental Dialectic 513 

can only prepare the understanding for theological know- 
ledge, and impart to it the right and natural direction. 

It must have been seen from this that transcendental 
questions admit of transcendental answers only, that is, of 
such which consist of mere concepts a priori without any 
empirical admixture. Our question, however, is clearly 
synthetical, and requires an extension of our knowledge 
beyond all limits of experience, till it reaches the existence 
of a Being which is to correspond to our pure idea, though 
no experience can ever be adequate to it. Ac- [p. 638] 
cording to our former proofs, all synthetical knowledge a 
priori is possible only, if it conforms to the formal con- 
ditions of a possible experience. All these principles 
therefore are of immanent validity only, that is, they must 
remain within the sphere of objects of empirical know- 
ledge, or of phenomena. Nothing, therefore, can be 
achieved by a transcendental procedure with reference to 
the theology of a purely speculative reason. 

If people, however, should prefer to call in question all 
the former proofs of the Analytic, rather than allow them- 
selves to be robbed of their persuasion of the value of the 
proofs on which they have rested so long, they surely can- 
not decline my request, when I ask them to justify them- 
selves, at least on this point, in what manner, and by what 
kind of illumination they trust themselves to soar above 
all possible experience, on the wings of pure ideas. I 
must ask to be excused from listening to new proofs, or 
to the tinkered workmanship of the old. No doubt the 
choice is not great, for all speculative proofs end in the 
one, namely, the ontological ; nor need I fear to be much 
troubled by the inventive fertility of the dogmatical de- 
fenders of that reason which they have delivered from the 

2L 



514 Transcendental Dialectic 

bondage of the senses ; nor should I even, without con- 
sidering myself a very formidable antagonist, decline the 
challenge to detect the fallacy in every one of their 
attempts, and thus to dispose of their pretensions. Hut 
I know too well that the hope of better success [p. 639] 
will never be surrendered by those who have once accus- 
tomed themselves to dogmatical persuasion, and I therefore 
restrict myself to the one just demand, that my opponents 
should explain in general, from the nature of the human 
understanding, or from any other sources of knowledge, 
what we are to do in order to extend our knowledge en- 
tirely a priori y and to carry it to a point where no possible 
experience, and therefore no means whatever, is able to 
secure to a concept invented by ourselves its objective 
reality. In whatever way the understanding may have 
reached that concept, it is clearly impossible that the 
existence of its object could be found in it through anal- 
ysis, because the very knowledge of the existence of the 
object implies that it exists outside our thoughts. We 
cannot in fact go beyond concepts, nor, unless we follow 
the empirical connection by which nothing but phenomena 
can be given, hope to discover new objects and imaginary 
beings. 

Although then reason, in its purely speculative appli- 
cation, is utterly insufficient for this great undertaking, 
namely, to prove the existence of a Supreme Being, it has 
nevertheless this great advantage of being able to correct 
our knowledge of it, if it can be acquired from [p. 640] 
elsewhere, to make it consistent with itself and every 
intelligible view, and to purify it from everything incom- 
patible with the concept of an original Being, and from 
all admixture of empirical limitations. 



Transcendental Dialectic 5 1 5 

In spite of its insufficiency, therefore, transcendental 
theology has a very important negative use, as a constant 
test of our reason, when occupied with pure ideas only, 
which, as such, admit of a transcendental standard only. 
For suppose that on practical grounds the admission of 
a highest and all-sufficient Being, as the highest intelli- 
gence, were to maintain its validity without contradiction, 
it would be of the greatest importance that we should be 
able to determine that concept accurately on its transcen- 
dental side, as the concept of a necessary and most real 
Being, to remove from it what is contradictory to that 
highest reality and purely phenomenal (anthropomorphic 
in the widest sense), and at the same time to put an end 
to all opposite assertions, whether atheistic, deistic, or 
anthropomorpliistic. Such a critical treatment would not 
be difficult, because the same arguments by which the 
insufficiency of human reason in asserting the existence 
of such a Being has been proved, must be sufficient also 
to prove the invalidity of opposite assertions, [p. 641] 
For whence can anybody, through pure speculation of 
reason, derive his knowledge that there is no Supreme 
Being, as the cause of all that exists, or that it can claim 
none of those qualities which we, to judge from their 
effects, represent to ourselves as compatible with the 
dynamical realities of a thinking Being, or that, in the 
latter case, they would be subject to all those limitations 
which sensibility imposes inevitably on all the intelligences 
known to us by experience ? 

For the purely speculative use of reason, therefore, the 
Supreme Being remains, no doubt, an ideal only, but an 
ideal without a flaw, a concept which finishes and crowns 
the whole of human knowledge, and the objective reality 



c;i 6 Transcendental Dialectic 

of which, though it cannot be proved, can neither be dis- 
proved in that way. If then there should be an Ethico-the- 
ology to supply that deficiency, transcendental theology, 
which before was problematical only, would prove itself in- 
dispensable in determining its concept, and in constantly 
testing reason, which is so often deceived by sensibility, and 
not even always in harmony with its own ideas. Necessity, 
infinity, unity, extra-mundane existence (not as a world- 
soul), eternity, free from conditions of time, omnipresence, 
free from conditions of space, omnipotence, etc., all these 
are transcendental predicates, and their purified [p. 642] 
concepts, which are so much required for every theology, 
can therefore be derived from transcendental theology only. 

APPENDIX 

to the Transcendental Dialectic 

Of the Regulative Use of the Ideas of Pure Reason 

The result of all the dialectical attempts of pure reason 
does not only confirm what we proved in the transcen- 
dental Analytic, namely, that all our conclusions, which 
are to lead us beyond the field of possible experience, 
are fallacious and groundless, but teaches us also this in 
particular, that human reason has a natural inclination 
to overstep these limits, and that transcendental ideas are 
as natural to it as categories to the understanding, with 
this distinction, however, that while the latter convey 
truth, that is, agreement of our concepts with their ob- 
jects, the former produce merely an irresistible illusion, 
against which we can defend ourselves by the severest 
criticism only. 



Transcendental Dialectic 5 1 7 

Everything that is founded in the nature of our fac- 
ulties must have some purpose, and "be in harmony with 
the right use of them, if only we can guard against a 
certain misunderstanding and discover their [p. 643] 
proper direction. The transcendental ideas, therefore, 
will probably possess their own proper and, therefore, 
immanent use, although, if their object is misunderstood, 
and they are mistaken for the concepts of real things, 
they may become transcendent in their application, and 
hence deceptive. For not the idea in itself, but its use 
only can, in regard to the whole of possible experience, 
be either transcendent or immanent, according as we direct 
them either immediately to objects wrongly supposed to 
correspond to them, or only to the use of the understand- 
ing in general with reference to objects with which it has 
a right to deal. All the faults of snbreptio are to be 
attributed to a want of judgment, never to the under- 
standing or to reason themselves. 

Reason never refers immediately to an object, but to 
the understanding only, and through it to its own empiri- 
cal use. It does not form, therefore, concepts of objects, 
but arranges them only, and imparts to them that unity 
which they can have in their greatest possible extension, 
that is, with reference to the totality of different series ; 
while the understanding does not concern itself with this 
totality, but only with that connection through which 
such series of conditions become possible according to 
concepts. Reason has therefore for its object [p. 644] 
the understanding only and its fittest employment ; and, 
as the understanding brings unity into the manifold of the 
objects by means of concepts, reason brings unity into 
the manifold of concepts by means of ideas, making a 



5 1 8 Transcendental Dialectic 

certain collective unity the aim of the operations of the 
understanding, which otherwise is occupied with distribu- 
tive unity only 

I maintain, accordingly, that transcendental ideas ought 
never to be employed as constitutive, so that by them 
concepts of certain objects should be given, and that, if 
they are so employed, they are merely sophistical (dia- 
lectic concepts). They have, however, a most admirable 
and indispensably necessary regulative use, in directing 
the understanding to a certain aim, towards which all 
the lines of its rules converge and which, though it is an 
idea only {focus iiuaginarius), that is, a point from which, 
as lying completely outside the limits of possible experi- 
ence, the concepts of the understanding do not in reality 
proceed, serves nevertheless to impart to them the greatest 
unity and the greatest extension. Hence there arises, no 
doubt, the illusion, as if those lines sprang 1 from an ob- 
ject itself, outside the field of empirically possible experi- 
ence (as objects are seen behind the surface of a mirror) ; 
but this illusion (by which we need not allow ourselves to 
be deceived) is nevertheless indispensably necessary, if, 
besides the objects which lie before our eyes, [p. 645] 
we want to see those also which lie far away at our back, 
that is to say, if, as in our case, we wish to direct the 
understanding beyond every given experience (as a part 
of the whole of possible experience), and thus to its 
greatest possible, or extremest extension. 

If we review the entire extent of our knowledge sup- 
plied to us by the understanding, we shall find that it 
is the systematising of that knowledge, that is, its cohe- 

1 Read attsgeschossen. 



Transcendental Dialectic 5 1 9 

rence according to one principle, which forms the proper 
province of reason. This unity of reason always presup- 
poses an idea, namely, that of the form of a whole of our 
knowledge, preceding the definite knowledge of its parts, 
and containing the conditions according to which we are to 
determine a priori the place of every part and its relation to 
the rest. Such an idea accordingly demands the complete 
unity of the knowledge of our understanding, by which 
that knowledge becomes not only a mere aggregate but 
a system, connected according to necessary laws. We 
ought not to say that such an idea is a concept of an 
object, but only of the complete unity of concepts, so far 
as that unity can serve as a rule of the understanding. 
Such concepts of reason are not derived from nature, but 
we only interrogate nature, according to these ideas, and 
consider our knowledge as defective so long as it is not 
adequate to them. We must confess that [p. 646] 
pure earth, pure water, pure air, etc., are hardly to be met 
with. Nevertheless we require the concepts of them 
(which, so far as their perfect purity is concerned, have 
their origin in reason only) in order to be able to deter- 
mine properly the share which belongs to every one of 
these natural causes in phenomena. Thus every kind of 
matter is referred to earths (as mere weight), to salts and 
inflammable bodies (as force), and lastly, to water and air 
as vehicles (or, as it were, machines, by which the former 
exercise their operations), in order thus, according to the 
idea of a mechanism, to explain the mutual chemical 
workings of matter. For, although not openly acknow- 
ledged in these terms, such an influence of reason on the 
classifications of natural philosophers can easily be dis- 
covered. 



520 Transcendental Dialectic 

If reason is the faculty of deducing the particular from 
the general, the general is either certain in itself and 
given, or not. In the former case nothing is required 
but judgment in subsuming, the particular being thus 
necessarily determined by the general. This I shall call 
the apodictic use of reason. In the latter case, when the 
general is admitted as problematical only, and as a mere 
idea, while the particular is certain, but the universality 
of the rule applying to it is still a problem, several par- 
ticular cases, which are all certain, are tested by the rule, 
whether they submit to it ; and in this case, when it 
appears that all particular cases which can be produced 
are subjected to it, the rule is concluded to be [p. 647] 
universal, and from that universality of the rule conclu- 
sions are drawn afterwards with regard to all cases, even 
those that are not given by themselves. This I shall call 
the hypothetical use of reason. 

The hypothetical use of reason, resting on ideas as 
problematical concepts, ought not to be used constitutive!?, 
as if we could prove by it, judging strictly, the truth of 
the universal rule, which has been admitted as an hypothe- 
sis. For how are we to know all possible cases, which, as 
subject to the same principle, should prove its universality ? 
The proper hypothetical use of reason is regulative only, 
and intended to introduce, as much as possible, unity into 
the particulars of knowledge, and thus to approximate the 
rule to universality. 

The hypothetical use of reason aims therefore at the 
systematical unity of the knowledge of the understanding, 
and that unity is the touchstone of the truth of the rules. 
On the other hand, that systematical unity (as a mere idea) 
is only a projected unity, to be considered, not as given in 



Transcendental Dialectic 521 

itself, but as a problem only, though helping us to dis- 
cover a principle for the manifold and particular exercise 
of the understanding, and thus to lead the understanding 
to cases also which are not given, and to render it more 
systematical. 

We have learnt, therefore, that the systematical unity, 
introduced by reason into the manifold know- [p. 648] 
ledge of the understanding, is a logical principle, intended 
to help the understanding by means of ideas, where by it- 
self it is insufficient to establish rules, and at the same 
time to impart to the variety of its rules a certain harmony 
(or system according to principles), and by it a certain co- 
herence, so far as that is possible. To say, however, 
whether the nature of the objects or the nature of the 
understanding which recognises them as objects, were in 
themselves intended for systematical unity, and whether 
to a certain extent we may postulate real unity a priori, 
without any reference to the peculiar interest of reason, 
maintaining that all possible kinds of knowledge of the 
understanding (therefore the empirical also) possess such 
unity and are subject to such general principles from which, 
in spite of their differences, they can all be derived, would 
be to apply a trajiscendental principle of reason, and to 
render systematical unity necessary, not only subjectively 
and logically as a method, but objectively also. 

We shall try to illustrate this use of reason by an ex- 
ample. One of the different kinds of unity, according to 
the concepts of the understanding, is that of the causality 
of a substance, which we call power. The different mani- 
festations of one and the same substance display at first 
so much diversity that one feels constrained to admit at 
first almost as many powers as there are effects. Thus 



522 Transcendental Dialectic 

we see, for instance, in the human mind sensa- [p. 649] 
tion, consciousness, imagination, memory, wit, discrimina- 
tion, pleasure, desire, etc. At first a simple logical maxim 
tells us to reduce this apparent diversity as much as 
possible by discovering, through comparison, hidden iden- 
tity, and finding out, for instance, whether imagination 
connected with consciousness, be not memory, wit, dis- 
crimination, or, it may be, understanding and reason. 
The idea of a fundamental power, of which logic knows 
nothing as to its existence, is thus at least the problem of 
a systematical representation of the existing diversity of 
powers. The logical principle of reason requires us to 
produce this unity as far as possible, and the more we 
find that manifestations of one or the other power are 
identical, the more probable does it become that they are 
only different expressions of one and the same power 
which, relatively speaking, may be called their funda- 
mental power. The same is done with the others. 

These relatively fundamental powers must again be 
compared with each other, in order, if possible, by dis- 
covering their harmony, to bring them nearer to one only 
radical, that is, absolute fundamental power. Such a 
unity, however, is only an hypothesis of reason. It is not 
maintained that such a unity must really exist, but only 
that we must look for it in the interest of reason, that is, 
for the establishment of certain principles for the various 
rules supplied to us by experience, and thus introduce, if 
it is possible, systematical unity into our know- [p. 650] 
ledge. 

If, however, we watch the transcendental use of the 
understanding, we find that the idea of a fundamental 
power is not only meant as a problem, and for hypotheti- 



Transcendental Dialectic 523 

cal use, but claims for itself objective reality, postulating 
the systematical unity of the diverse powers of a sub- 
stance, and thus establishing an apodictic principle of 
reason. For without even having tested the harmony of 
those diverse powers, nay, even if failing to discover it, 
after repeated experiments, we still suppose that such a 
unity exists, and this not only, as in our example, on 
account of the unity of the substance, but even in cases 
where very many, though to a certain degree homo- 
geneous, powers are seen, as in matter in general! Here, 
too, reason presupposes a systematical unity of diverse 
powers, because particular laws of nature are subject to 
more general laws, and parsimony in principles is not only 
considered as an economical rule of reason, but as an 
essential law of nature. 

And, indeed, it is difficult to understand how a logical 
principle by which reason demands the unity of rules can 
exist without a transcendental principle, by which such a 
systematical unity is admitted as inherent in the objects 
themselves, and as a priori necessary. For how could 
reason in its logical application presume to treat [p. 651] 
the diversity of powers which we see in nature as simply 
a disguised unity, and to deduce it, as far as possible, from 
some fundamental power, if it were open to reason to 
admit equally the diversity of all powers, and to look upon 
the systematical unity in their derivation as contrary to 
nature ? In doing this reason would run counter to its 
own destination, and propose as its aim an idea contrary 
to the constitution of nature. Nor could we say that 
reason had previously, according to its principles, deduced 
that unity from the contingent character of nature, because 
this law of reason, compelling her to look for unity, is 



524 Transcendental Dialectic 

necessary, and without it we should have no reason at 
all, and, in the absence of reason, no coherent use of the 
understanding, and, in the absence of that, no sufficient 
test of empirical truth ; — on which account we must ad- 
mit the systematical unity of nature as objectively valid 
and necessary. 

We find this transcendental presupposition concealed in 
the cleverest way in the principles of philosophers, though 
they are not aware of it, nor have confessed it to them- 
selves. That all the diversities of particular things do not 
exclude identity of species, that the various species must 
be treated as different determinations (varieties) [p. 652] 
of a few genera^ and these again of still higher genera ; 
that therefore we ought to look for a certain systematical 
unity of all possible empirical concepts, as derivable from 
higher and more general concepts, this is a rule of the 
schools or a logical principle without which no use of the 
understanding would be possible ; for we can only conclude 
the particular from the general, if the general qualities of 
things form the foundation on which the particular quali- 
ties rest. 

That, however, there exists in nature such a unity, is 
only a supposition of the philosophers, embodied in their 
well-known scholastic rule, 'entia praeter necessitatem non 
esse mriltiplicaudal 'beginnings or principles should not 
be multiplied beyond necessity.' It is implied in this, 
that the nature cf things itself offers material for the post- 
ulated unity of reason, and that the apparent infinite vari- 
ety ought not to prevent us from supposing behind it the 
existence of unity in fundamental properties, from which 
all diversity is derived by mere determination only. That 
unity, though it is an idea only, has been at all times so 



Transcendental Dialectic 525 

zealously pursued, that there was more ground for moder- 
ating than for encouraging the desire for it. It was some- 
thing when chemists succeeded in reducing all salts to 
two genera, namely, acids and alkalies ; but they tried to 
consider even this distinction as a variety only, or as a 
different manifestation of one and the same fun- [p. 653] 
damental element. Different kinds of earths (the material 
of stones and even of metals) have been reduced gradually 
to three, at last to two ; but not content with this, chem- 
ists cannot get rid of the idea that there is behind those 
varieties but one genus, nay, that there may be even a com- 
mon principle for the earths and the salts. It might be 
supposed that this is only an economical trick of reason, 
for the purpose of saving itself trouble, and a purely hy- 
pothetical attempt which, if successful, would impart by 
that very unity a certain amount of probability to the 
presupposed principle of explanation. Such a selfish pur- 
pose, however, can easily be distinguished from the idea 
according to which we all presuppose that this unity of 
reason agrees with nature, and that in this case reason 
does not beg but bids, although we may be quite unable, 
as yet, to determine the limits of that unity. 

If there existed among phenomena so great a diversity, 
not of form, for in this they may be similar, but of con- 
tents, that even the sharpest human understanding could 
not, by a comparison of the one with the other, discover 
the slightest similarity among them (a case which is quite 
conceivable), the logical law of genera would [p. 654] 
have no existence at all, there would be no concept of 
genus, nor any general concept, nay, no understanding at 
all, considering that the understanding has to do with 
concepts only. The logical principle of genera presup- 



526 Transcendental Dialectic 

poses, therefore, a transcendental one, if it is to be applied 
to nature, that is, to all objects presented to our senses. 
According to it, in the manifoldness of a possible experi- 
ence, some homogeneousness is necessarily supposed (al- 
though it many be impossible to determine its degree a 
priori), because without it, no empirical concepts, and con- 
sequently, no experience, would be possible. 

The logical principle of genera, which postulates iden- 
tity, is balanced by another principle, namely, that of 
species, which requires manifoldness and diversity in 
things, in spite of their agreement as belonging to the 
same genus, and which prescribes to the understanding 
that it should pay no less attention to the one than to 
the other. This principle, depending on acute observa- 
tion or on the faculty of distinction, checks the generalis- 
ing flights of fancy, and reason thus exhibits a twofold 
and conflicting interest, namely, on the one hand, the 
interest in the extent (generality) of genera, on the other 
hand, the interest in the contents (distinction) of the 
manifoldness of species. In the former case the under- 
standing thinks more under its concepts, in the latter, 
more in its concepts. This distinction shows itself in 
the different manner of thought among students [p. 655] 
of nature, some of them (who are pre-eminently specula- 
tive) being almost averse to heterogeneousness, and 
always intent on the unity of genera ; while others, pre- 
eminently empirical, are constantly striving to divide 
nature into so much variety that one might lose almost 
all hope of being able to judge its phenomena according 
to general principles. 

This latter tendency of thought is likewise based on 
a logical principle which aims at the systematical com- 



Transcendental Dialectic 527 

pleteness of all knowledge, so that, beginning with the 
genus and descending to the manifold that may be con- 
tained in it, we try to impart extension to our system, 
as we tried to impart unity to it, when ascending to a 
genus. For if we only know the sphere of a concept 
which determines a genus, we can no more judge how 
far its subdivision may be carried than we can judge 
how far the divisibility of matter may be carried, by 
knowing the space it occupies. Hence every genus 
requires species, and these again sub-species, and as none 
even of these sub-species is without a sphere (extent as 
conceptus communis), reason in its utmost extension re- 
quires that no species or sub-species should in itself 
be considered as the lowest. Every species is always a 
concept containing that only which is common to differ- 
ent things, and as it cannot be completely determined, it 
cannot be directly referred to an individual, but [p. 656] 
must always comprehend other concepts, that is, sub- 
species. This principle of specification might be ex- 
pressed by e7itium varietates non temere esse minucndas. 
It is easily seen that this logical law also would be 
without meaning and incapable of application, unless it 
were founded on a transcendental law of specification 
which, though it cannot demand a real infinity of variety 
in things that are to become our objects (for this would 
not be justified by the logical principle, which only asserts 
the indeterminability of the logical sphere with regard to 
a possible division), yet imposes on the understanding the 
duty of looking for sub-species under every species, and 
for smaller varieties for every variety. If there were no 
lower concepts, there could not be higher concepts. Now 
the understanding knows all that it knows by concepts 



528 Transcendental Dialectic 

only, and hence, however far it may carry the division, 
never by means of intuition alone, but again and again 
by lower concepts. In order to know phenomena in 
their complete determination (which is possible by the 
understanding only) it is necessary to carry on without 
stopping the specification of its concepts, and always 
to proceed to still remaining differences or varieties of 
which abstraction had been made in forming the con- 
cept of the species, and still more in forming that of 
the genus. 

Nor can this law of specification have been [p. 657] 
derived from experience, which can never give so far- 
reaching a prospect. Empirical specification very soon 
comes to a standstill in the distinction of the manifold, 
unless it is led by the antecedent transcendental law of 
specification, as a principle of reason, and impelled to 
look for and to conjecture still differences, even where 
they do not appear to the senses. That absorbent earths 
are of different kinds (chalk and muriatic earths) could 
only be discovered by an antecedent rule of reason, which 
required the understanding to look for diversity, because 
it presupposed such wealth in nature as to feel justified 
in anticipating such diversity. For it is only under a 
presupposition of a diversity in nature, and under the 
condition that its objects should be homogeneous, that 
we have understanding, because it is this very diversity 
of all that can be comprehended under a concept which 
constitutes the use of that concept, and the occupation 
of the understanding. 

Reason thus prepares the field for the understanding — 
1st. Through the principle of the homogeneousness of 
the manifold, as arranged under higher genera. 



Transcendental Dialectic 529 

2ndly. Through the principle of the variety of the 
homogeneous in lower species ; to which, 

3rdly, it adds a law of the affinity of all concepts, 
which requires a continual transition from every species 
to every other species, by a gradual increase of [p. 658] 
diversity. We may call these the principles of homogene- 
ousness, of specification, and of continuity of forms. The 
last arises from the union of the two former, after both 
in ascending to higher genera, and in descending to lower 
species, the systematical connection in the idea has been 
completed ; so that all diversities are related to each 
other, because springing from one highest genus, through 
all degrees of a more and more extended determination. 

We may represent to ourselves the systematical unity 
under these three logical principles, in the following 
manner. Every concept may be regarded as a point 
which, as the standpoint of the spectator, has its own 
horizon, enclosing a number of things that may be repre- 
sented, and, as it were, surveyed from that point. Within 
that horizon, an infinite number of points must exist, each 
of which has again its own narrower horizon ; that is, 
every species contains sub-species, according to the prin- 
ciple of specification, and the logical horizon consists of 
smaller horizons (sub-species only), but not of points, 
which possess no extent (individuals). But for all these 
different horizons, that is genera, determined by as many 
concepts, a common horizon may be imagined, in which 
they may all be surveyed, as from a common centre. This 
would be the higher genus, while the highest [p. 659] 
genus would be the universal and true horizon, determined 
from the standpoint of the highest concept, and compre- 
hending all variety as genera, species, and sub-species. 

2 M 



530 Transcendental Dialectic 

That highest standpoint is reached by the law of 
homogeneousness, and all the lower standpoints in their 
greatest variety, by the law of specification. As in this 
way there is no void in the whole extent of all possible 
concepts, and as nothing can be met with outside it, 
there arises from the presupposition of that universal 
horizon and its complete division, the principle of non 
datnr vacuum formarum. According to this principle 
there are no different original and first genera, as it were 
isolated and separated from each other (by an intervening 
void), but all diverse genera are divisions only of one 
supreme and general genus. From that principle springs 
its immediate consequence, datnr continuum formarum \ 
that is, all the diversities of species touch each other 
and admit of no transition from one to another per 
saltum, but only by small degrees of difference, by 
which from one we arrive at the other. In one word, 
there are neither species nor sub-species, which (in the 
view of reason) are the nearest possible to each other, 
but there always remain possible intermediate species, 
differing from the first and the second by [p. 660] 
smaller degrees than those by which these differ from 
each other. 

The first law, therefore, keeps us from admitting an 
extravagant variety of different original genera, and recom- 
mends attention to homogeneousness. The second, on 
the contrary, checks that tendency to unity, and pre- 
scribes distinction of sub-species before applying any 
general concept to individuals. The third unites both, 
by prescribing, even with the utmost variety, homogene- 
ousness, through the gradual transition from the one 
species to another : thus indicating a kind of relation- 



Transcendental Dialectic 531 

ship of the different branches, as having all sprung from 
the same stem. 

This logical law, however, of the continuum specierum 
(formarum logicarum) presupposes a transcendental law 
{lex continui in natura), without which the understand- 
ing would only be misled by following, it may be, a path 
contrary to nature. That law must therefore rest on 
purely transcendental, and not on empirical grounds. 
For in the latter case, it would come later than the 
systems, while in fact the systematical character of our 
knowledge of nature is produced by it. Nor are these 
laws intended only for tests to be carried out experimen- 
tally by their aid, although such a connection, if it is found 
in nature, forms a powerful argument in support [p. 661] 
of that unity which was conceived as hypothetical only. 
These laws have therefore a certain utility in this respect 
also, yet it is easily seen that they regard the parsimony 
of causes, the manifoldness of effects, and an affinity be- 
tween the parts of nature arising from thence, as both 
rational and natural, so that these principles carry their 
recommendation direct, and not only as aids towards a 
proper method of studying nature. 

It is easy to see, however, that this continuity of forms 
is a mere idea, and that no object corresponding to it can 
be pointed out in experience, not only because the species 
in nature are actually divided, and must form, each by it- 
self, a quantum discretum, while, if the gradual progression 
of their affinity were continuous, nature would contain a 
real infinity of intermediate links between every two 
given species, which is impossible ; but also, because we 
cannot make any definite empirical use of that law, 
considering that not the smallest criterion of affinity is 



532 Transcendental Dialectic 

indicated by it to tell us how and how far we ought 
to seek for grades of affinity, it telling us only that we 
ought to seek for them. 

If we now arrange these principles of systematical unity 
in the order required for their empirical employ- [p. 662] 
went, they might stand thus : manifoldness, variety, and 
unity, each of them as ideas taken in the highest degree 
of their completeness. Reason presupposes the cognitions 
of the understanding in their direct relation to experience, 
and looks for their unity according to ideas which go 
far beyond the possibility of experience. The affinity of 
the manifold, in spite of its diversity, under one principle 
of unity, refers not only to things, but even more to the 
qualities and powers of things. Thus if, for example, our 
imperfect experience represents to us the orbits of the 
planets as circular, and we find deviations from that course, 
we look for them in that which is able to change the 
circle according to a fixed law, through infinite interven- 
ing degrees, into one of these deviating courses ; that is, 
we suppose that the movements of the planets which are 
not circular will approximate more or less to the proper- 
ties of a circle, and thus are led on to the ellipse. The 
comets display a still greater deviation in their courses, 
because, so far as our experience goes, they do not return 
in a circle, and we then conjecture a parabolic course 
which, at all events, is allied to the ellipse, and if its 
longer axis is widely extended, cannot be distinguished 
from it in our observations. We thus arrive, [p. 663] 
under the guidance of these principles, at a unity of the 
different genera or kinds in the forms of these orbits, 
and, proceeding still further, at a unity of the cause of all 
the laws of their movements, namely, gravitation. Here 



Transcendental Dialectic 533 

we take our stand and extend our conquests, trying to 
explain all varieties and seeming deviations from those 
rules from the same principle, nay, adding more than ex- 
perience can ever affirm, namely, imaginary hyperbolic 
courses of comets constructed according to the rules of 
affinity, in which courses these heavenly bodies may 
entirely leave our solar system, and, moving from sun to 
sun, unite in their course the most distant parts of a 
universe unlimited to our minds, but yet held together 
by one and the same moving power. 

What is most remarkable in these principles, and is, in 
fact, their chief interest for us is, that they seem to be 
transcendental, and, although containing mere ideas for 
the guidance of the empirical use of reason, ideas which 
our reason can only follow as it were asymptotically, that 
is, approximately and without our reaching them, they 
nevertheless possess, as synthetical propositions a priori, 
an objective, though an undefined validity, serving as a 
rule for possible experience, nay, as heuristic principles in 
the elaboration of experience. With all this a transcen- 
dental deduction of them cannot be produced, [p. 664] 
and is, in fact, as we have proved before, always impossi- 
ble with regard to ideas. 

In the transcendental Analytic we distinguished the 
dynamical principles of the understanding, as purely regu- 
lative principles of the intuition, from the mathematical, 
which, in regard to intuition, are constitutive. In spite 
of this, these dynamical laws are constitutive with regard 
to experience, because they render the concepts, without 
which there can be no experience, a priori possible. The 
principles of pure reason, however, cannot be constitutive, 
even with reference to empirical concepts, because we cannot 



534 Transcendental Dialectic 

assign to them any corresponding schema of sensibility ; 
they cannot, consequently, have any object in concrete 
If, then, I give up an empirical use of them as constitutive 
principles, how can I yet secure to them a regulative 
employment, and with it some objective validity, and what 
can be the meaning of it ? 

The understanding forms an object for reason in the 
same manner as sensibility for the understanding. It is 
the proper business of reason to render the unity of all 
possible empirical acts of the understanding systematical, 
in the same manner as the understanding connects the 
manifold of phenomena by concepts, and brings it under 
empirical laws. The acts of the understanding, however, 
without the schemata of sensibility, are undefined, and in 
the same manner the unity of reason is in itself [p. 665] 
undefined with reference to the conditions under which, 
and the extent to which, the understanding may connect 
its concepts systematically. But although no schema of 
intuition can be discovered for the perfect systematical 
unity of all the concepts of the understanding, it is possi- 
ble and necessary that there should be an analogon of 
such a schema, and this is the idea of the maximum, both 
of the division and of the combination of the knowledge 
of the understanding under one single principle. It is 
quite possible to form a definite thought of what is great- 
est and absolutely complete, when all restrictive condi- 
tions that lead to an undefined manifoldness have been 
omitted. In this sense the idea of reason forms an analo- 
gon of the schema of sensibility, but with this difference, 
that the application of the concepts of the understanding 
to the schema of reason is not a knowledge of the object 
itself, as in the case of the application of the categories 



Transcendental Dialectic 535 

to sensuous schemata, but only a rule or principle for the 
systematical unity in the whole use of the understanding. 
Now, as every principle which fixes a priori a perfect 
unity of its use for the understanding is valid, though in- 
directly only, for the object of experience also, it follows 
that the principles of pure reason have objective reality 
with reference to that object also, not, however, in order 
to determine anything therein, but only in order to indi- 
cate the procedure by which the empirical and definite 
use of the understanding may throughout re- [p. 666~] 
main in complete harmony with itself, by being brought 
into connection, as much as possible, with the principle of 
systematical unity, and being deduced from it. 

I call all subjective principles which are derived, not 
from the quality of an object, but from the interest which 
reason takes in a certain possible perfection of our know- 
ledge of an object, maxims of reason. Thus there are 
maxims of speculative reason, which rest entirely on its 
speculative interest, though they may seem to be objec- 
tive principles. 

When purely regulative principles are taken for consti- 
tutive, they may become contradictory, as objective prin- 
ciples. If, however, they are taken for maxims only, 
there is no real contradiction, but it is only the differ- 
ent interest of reason which causes different modes of 
thought. In reality, reason has one interest only, and 
the conflict of its maxims arises only from a difference 
and a mutual limitation of the methods in which that 
interest is to be satisfied. 

In this manner one philosopher is influenced more by 
the interest of diversity (according to the principle of 
specification), another by the interests of unity (according 



536 Transcendental Dialectic 

to the principle of aggregation). Each believes [p. 667] 
that he has derived his judgment from his insight into 
the object, and yet founds it entirely on the greater or 
smaller attachment to one of the two principles, neither 1 
of which rests on objective grounds, but only on an in- 
terest of reason, and should therefore be called maxims 
rather than principles. I often see even intelligent men 
quarrelling with each other about the characteristic dis- 
tinctions of men, animals, or plants, nay, even of minerals, 
the one admitting the existence of certain tribal charac- 
teristics, founded on descent, or decided and inherited 
differences of families, races, etc., while others insist that 
nature has made the same provision for all, and that all 
differences are due to accidental environment. But they 
need only consider the nature of the object, in order to 
understand that it is far too deeply hidden for both of 
them to enable them to speak from a real insight into the 
nature of the object. It is nothing but the twofold inter- 
est of reason, one party cherishing the one, another party 
the other, or pretending to do so. But this difference of 
the two maxims of manifoldness or unity in nature' may 
easily be adjusted, though as long as they are taken for 
objective knowledge they cause not only disputes, but 
actually create impediments which hinder the progress 
of truth, until a means is found of reconciling [p. 668~\ 
the contradictory interests, and thus giving satisfaction 
to reason. 

The same applies to the assertion or denial of the 
famous law of the continuous scale of created beings, first 
advanced by Leibniz, and so cleverly trimmed up by 

1 Read keiner instead of keine. 



Transcendental Dialectic 537 

Bonnet. It is nothing but a carrying out of the prin- 
ciple of affinity, resting on the interest of reason ; for 
neither observation nor insight into the constitution of 
nature could ever have supplied it as an objective asser- 
tion. The steps of such a ladder, as far as they can be 
supplied by experience, are too far apart from each other, 
and the so-called small differences are often in nature 
itself such wide gaps that no value can be attached to 
such observations as revealing the intentions of nature, 
particularly as it must always be easy to discover in the 
great variety of things certain similarities and approxi- 
mations. The method, on the contrary, of looking for 
order in nature, according to such a principle, and the 
maxim of admitting such order (though it may be uncer- 
tain where and how far) as existing in nature in general, 
form certainly a legitimate and excellent regulative prin- 
ciple of reason, only that, as such, it goes far beyond 
where experience or observation could follow it. It only 
indicates the way which leads to systematical unity, but 
does not determine anything beyond. 

Of the Ultimate Aim of the Natural Dialectic of 

Human Reason [p. 669] 

The ideas of pure reason can never be dialectical in 
themselves, but it must be due to their misemployment, 
if a deceptive illusion arise from them. They are given 
to us by the nature of our reason, and this highest tribu- 
nal of all the rights and claims of speculation cannot 
possibly itself contain original fallacies and deceits. We 
must suppose, therefore, that they had a good and legiti- 
mate intention in the natural disposition of our reason. 



538 Transcendental Dialectic 

The mob of sophists, however, cry out as usual about 
absurdities and contradictions, and blame the govern- 
ment the secret plans of which they cannot even under- 
stand, while it is to its beneficent influence that they owe 
their protection and that amount of intelligence which 
enables them to blame and condemn the government. 

We cannot use a concept a priori with any safety, 
without having first established its transcendental deduc- 
tion. It is true the ideas of pure reason do not allow 
of a deduction in the same manner as the categories ; 
but if they are to claim any, though only an undefined 
objective validity, and are not to represent mere fictions 
of thought only (entia rationis ratiocinantis), a [p. 670] 
deduction of them must be possible, even though it may 
differ from that which we were able to give of the cate- 
gories. This will form the completion of the critical 
task of pure reason, and it is this which we now mean 
to undertake. 

It makes a great difference whether something is repre- 
sented to our reason as an object absolutely, or merely as 
an object in the idea. In the former case my concepts are 
meant to determine the object, in the latter there is only 
a schema to which no object, not even a hypothetical one, 
corresponds directly, but which only serves to represent to 
ourselves indirectly other objects through their relation 
to that idea, and according to their systematical unity. 
Thus I say that the concept of a highest intelligence is a 
mere idea, that is, that its objective reality is not to con- 
sist in its referring directly to any object (for in that sense 
we should not be able to justify its objective validity) ; but 
that it is only a schema, arranged according to the condi- 
tions of the highest unity of reason, of the concept of a 



Transcendental Dialectic 539 

thing in general, serving only to obtain the greatest syste- 
matical unity in the empirical use of our reason, by helping 
us, as it were, to deduce the object of experience from the 
imagined object of that idea as its ground or cause. 
Thus we are led to say, for instance, that the [p. 671] 
things of the world must be considered as if they owed 
their existence to some supreme intelligence ; and the 
idea is thus a heuristic only, not an ostensive concept, 
showing us not how an object is really constituted, but 
how we, under the guidance of that concept, should look 
for the constitution and connection of the objects of 
experience in general. If, then, it can be shown that 
the three transcendental ideas (the psychological, cosmo- 
logical, and theological), although they cannot be used 
directly to determine any object corresponding to them, 
yet as rules l of the empirical use of reason will lead, 
under the presupposition of such an object in the idea, 
to a systematical unity, and to an extension of our em- 
pirical knowledge, without ever running counter to this 
knowledge, it becomes a necessary maxim of reason to act 
in accordance with such ideas. And this is really the tran- 
scendental deduction of all ideas of speculative reason, 
considered not as constitutive principles for extending 
our knowledge to more objects than can be given by 
experience, but as regulative principles for the systemat- 
ical unity of the manifold of empirical knowledge in 
general, which knowledge, within its own limits, can 
thus be better arranged and improved than it would 
be possible without such ideas, and by the mere use of 
the principles of the understanding. 

1 Instead of alle read als. 



540 Transcendental Dialectic 

I shall try to make this clearer. Following [p. 672] 
these ideas as principles, we shall first (in psychology) con- 
nect all phenomena, all the activity and receptivity of our 
mind, according to our internal experience, as if our mind 
were a simple substance, existing permanently, and with 
personal identity (in this life at least), while its states, to 
which those of the body belong as external conditions, are 
changing continually. Secondly (in cosmology), we are 
bound to follow up the conditions both of internal and 
external natural phenomena in an investigation that can 
never become complete, looking upon this investigation 
as infinite, and without any first or supreme member ; but 
we ought not therefore to deny the purely intelligible first 
grounds of these phenomena, as outside of them, though 
not allowed to bring them ever into connection with our 
explanations of nature, for the simple reason that we do not 
know them. Thirdly, and lastly (in theology), we must 
consider everything that may belong to the whole of possi- 
ble experience as if that experience formed one absolute 
but thoroughly dependent, and always, within the world of 
sense, conditioned unity ; but, at the same time, as if it, 
the whole of phenomena (the world of sense itself), had 
one supreme and all-sufficient ground, outside its sphere, 
namely, an independent, original, creative reason, in refer- 
ence to which we direct all empirical use of our [p. 673] 
reason in its widest extension in such a way as if the 
objects themselves had sprung from that archetype of all 
reason. In other words, we ought not to derive the in- 
ternal phenomena of the soul as if from a simple thinking 
substance, but derive them from each other, according to 
the idea of a simple being; we ought not to derive the 
order and systematical unity of the world from a supreme 



Transcendental Dialectic 541 

intelligence, but borrow from the idea of a supremely wise 
cause the rule according to which reason may best be used 
for her own satisfaction in the connection of causes and 
effects in this world. 

Now there is nothing that could in the least prevent us 
from admitting these ideas as objective and hypostatical 
also, except in the case of the cosmological idea, where 
reason, when trying to carry it out objectively, is met by 
an antinomy. There is no such antinomy in the psycho- 
logical and theological ideas, and how could anybody con- 
test their objective reality, as he knows as little how to 
deny, as we how to assert, their possibility ? 

It is true nevertheless that, in order to admit anything, 
it is not enough that there should be no positive impedi- 
ment to it, nor are we allowed to introduce fictions of our 
thoughts, transcending all our concepts, though contradict- 
ing none, as real and definite objects, on the mere credit 
of our somewhat perfunctory speculative reason, [p. 674] 
They should not therefore be admitted as real in them- 
selves, but their reality should only be considered as the 
reality of a schema of a regulative principle for the sys- 
tematical unity of all natural knowledge. Hence they are 
to be admitted as analoga only of real things, and not as 
real things in themselves. We remove from the object 
of an idea the conditions which limit the concepts of our 
understanding, and which alone enable us to have a definite 
concept of anything ; and then we represent to ourselves 
a something of which we know not in the least what it is 
by itself, but which, nevertheless, we represent to ourselves 
in a relation to the whole of phenomena, analogous to that 
relation which phenomena have among themselves. 

If therefore we admit such ideal beings, we do not really 



542 Transcendental Dialectic 

enlarge our knowledge beyond the objects of possible 
experience, but only the empirical unity of those objects, 
by means of that systematical unity of which the idea 
furnishes us the schema, and which therefore cannot claim 
to be a constitutive, but only a regulative principle. For 
if we admit a something, or a real being, corresponding to 
the idea, we do not intend thereby to enlarge our know- 
ledge of things by means of transcendental 1 concepts; 
for such a being is admitted in the idea only, and not by 
itself, and only in order to express that systematical unity 
which is to guide the empirical use of our reason, [p. 675] 
without stating anything as to what is the ground of that 
unity or the internal nature of such a being on which, as 
its cause, that unity depends. 

Thus the transcendental and the only definite concept 
which purely speculative reason gives us of God is in the 
strictest sense deistic ; that is, reason does not even supply 
us with the objective validity of such a concept, but only 
with the idea of something on which the highest and neces- 
sary unity of all empirical reality is founded, and which we 
cannot represent to ourselves except in analogy with a 
real substance, being, according to the laws of nature, the 
cause of all things ; always supposing that we undertake 
to think it at all as a particular object, and, satisfied with 
the mere idea of the regulative principle of reason, do not 
rather put aside the completion of all the conditions of our 
thought, as too much for the human understanding, which, 
however, is hardly compatible with that perfect systemati- 

1 The early editions read transcendenten, instead of transcendentalen, which 
is given in the corrigenda of the Fifth Edition ; it is not impossible, however, 
that Kant may have meant to write transcendenten, in order to indicate the 
illegitimate use of these concepts. 



Transcendental Dialectic 543 

cal unity of our knowledge to which reason at least imposes 
no limits. 

Thus it happens that, if we admit a Divine Being, we 
have not the slightest conception either of the internal 
possibility of its supreme perfection, nor of the [p. 6y6'] 
necessity of its existence, but are able at least thus to 
satisfy all other questions relating to contingent things, 
and give the most perfect satisfaction to reason with 
reference to that highest unity in its empirical applica- 
tion that has to be investigated, but not in reference to 
that hypothesis itself. This proves that it is the specu- 
lative interest of reason, and not its real insight, which 
justifies it in starting from a point so far above its proper 
sphere, in order to survey from thence its objects, as be- 
longing to a complete whole. 

Here we meet with a distinction in our mode of thought, 
the premisses remaining the same, a distinction which is 
somewhat subtle, but of great importance in transcen- 
dental philosophy. I may have sufficient ground for 
admitting something relatively (snppositio relativa), with- 
out having a right to admit it absolutely (snppositio abso- 
Inta). This distinction comes in when we have to deal 
with a regulative principle, of which we know the neces- 
sity by itself, but not the source of this necessity, and 
where we admit a supreme cause, only in order to think 
the universality of the principle with greater definiteness. 
Thus, if I think of a being as existing which corresponds 
to a mere idea, and to a transcendental one, I ought not 
to admit the existence of such a being by itself, because 
no concepts through which I can conceive any [p. 677] 
object definitely, can reach it, and the conditions of the 
objective validity of my concepts are excluded by the idea 



544 Transcendental Dialectic 

itself. The concepts of reality, of substance, even of 
causality, and those of necessity in existence, have no 
meaning that could determine any object, unless they are 
used to make the empirical knowledge of an object pos- 
sible. They may be used, therefore, to explain the possi- 
bility of things in the world of sense, but not to explain 
the possibility of a universe itself, because such an hy- 
pothesis is outside the world and could never be an object 
of possible experience. I can, however, admit perfectly 
well such an inconceivable Being, being the object of a 
mere idea, relative to the world of sense, though not as 
existing by itself. For if the greatest possible empirical 
use of my reason depends on an idea (on the systemati- 
cally complete unity of which I shall soon speak more in 
detail), which by itself can never be adequately represented 
in experience, though it is indispensably necessary in order 
to bring the empirical unity as near as possible to the 
highest perfection, I shall not only have the right, but 
even the duty, to realise such an idea, that is, to assign 
to it a real object, though only as a something in general, 
which by itself I do not know at all, and to which, as the 
cause of that systematical unity, I ascribe, in reference to 
it, such qualities as are analogous to the concepts [p. 678] 
employed by the understanding in dealing with experi- 
ence. I shall, therefore, according to the analogy of 
realities in the world, of substances, of causality, and of 
necessity, conceive a Being possessing all these in the 
highest perfection, and, as this idea rests on my reason 
only, conceive that Being as self-subsistent reason, being, 
through the ideas of the greatest harmony and unity, the 
cause of the universe. In doing this I omit all conditions 
which could limit the idea, simply in order to render, with 



Transcendental Dialectic 545 

the help of such a fundamental cause, the systematical unity 
of the manifold in the universe, and, through it, the great- 
est possible empirical use of reason, possible. I then look 
upon all connections in the world as if they were ordered 
by a supreme reason, of which our own reason is but a 
faint copy, and I represent to myself that Supreme Being 
through concepts which, properly speaking, are applicable 
to the world of sense only. As, however, I make none 
but a relative use of that transcendental hypothesis, as the 
substratum of the greatest possible unity of experience, I 
may perfectly well represent a Being which I distinguish 
from the world, by qualities which belong to the world of 
sense only. For I demand by no means, nor am I justi- 
fied in demanding, that I should know that object of my 
idea, according to what it may be by itself. I have no 
concepts whatever for it, and even the concepts [p. 679] 
of reality, substance, causality, ay, of the necessity in 
existence, lose all their meaning, and become mere titles 
of concepts, void of contents, as soon as I venture with 
them outside the field of the senses. I only present to 
myself the relation of a Being, utterly unknown to me as 
existing by itself, to the greatest possible systematical 
unity of the universe, in order to use it as a schema of the 
regulative principle of the greatest possible empirical use 
of my reason. 

If now we glance at the transcendental object of our 
idea, we find that we cannot, according to the concepts 
of reality, substance, causality, etc., presuppose its reality 
by itself, because such concepts are altogether inapplicable 
to something totally distinct from the world of sense. 
The supposition, therefore, which reason makes of a Su- 
preme Being, as the highest cause, is relative only, devised 



546 Transcendental Dialectic 

for the sake of the systematical unity in the world of 
sense, and a mere Something- in the idea, while we have 
no concept of what it may be by itself. Thus we are able 
to understand why we require the idea of an original Being, 
necessary by itself, with reference to all that is given to 
the senses as existing, but can never have the slightest 
conception of it and of its absolute necessity. 

At this point we are able to place the results of the 
whole transcendental Dialectic clearly before our eyes, 
and to define accurately the final aim of the ideas [p. 680] 
of pure reason, which could become dialectical through 
misapprehension and carelessness only. Pure reason is, 
in fact, concerned with nothing but itself, nor can it have 
any other occupation, because what is given to it are not 
the objects intended for the unity of an empirical concept, 
but the knowledge supplied by the understanding for the 
unity of the concept of reason, that is, of its connection 
according to a principle. The unity of reason is the unity 
of a system, and that systematical unity does not serve 
objectively as a principle of reason to extend its sway over 
objects, but subjectively as a maxim to extend its sway 
over all possible empirical knowledge of objects. Never- 
theless, the systematical connection which reason can im- 
part to the understanding in its empirical use helps not 
only to extend that use, but confirms at the same time its 
correctness ; nay, the principle of such systematical unity 
is objective also, though in an indefinite manner (princi- 
pium vagnm), not as a constitutive principle, determining 
something in its direct object, but only as a regulative 
principle and maxim, advancing and strengthening in- 
finitely (indefinitely), the empirical use of reason by the 
opening of new paths unknown to the understanding, 



Transcendental Dialectic 547 

without ever running counter to the laws of its practical 
use. 

Reason, however, cannot think this systemat- [p. 681] 
ical unity, without attributing to its idea an object, which, 
as experience has never given an example of complete 
systematical unity, can never be given in any experience. 
This Being, demanded by reason (ens rationis ratiocinatae), 
is no doubt a mere idea, and not therefore received as 
something absolutely real and real by itself. It is only 
admitted problematically (for we cannot reach it by any 
concepts of the understanding), in order to enable us to 
look upon the connection of things in the world of sense, 
as if they had their ground in that being, the real intention 
being to found upon it that systematical unity which is 
indispensable to reason, helpful in every way to the empir- 
ical knowledge of the understanding, and never a hin- 
drance to it. 

We misapprehend at once the true meaning of that idea, 
if we accept it as the assertion, or even as the hypothesis 
of a real thing to which the ground of the systematical 
construction of the world should be ascribed. What we 
ought to do is to leave it entirely uncertain, what that 
ground which escapes all our concepts may be by itself, 
and to use the idea only as a point of view from which 
alone we may expand that unity which is as essential to 
reason as beneficial to the understanding. In one word, 
that transcendental thing is only the schema of [p. 682] 
the regulative principle with which reason spreads syste- 
matical unity, as far as possible, over all experience. 

The first object of such an idea is the ego, considered 
merely as a thinking nature (soul). Now if I want to 
know the qualities with which a thinking being exists in 



548 Transcendental Dialectic 

itself, I have to consult experience : but of all the cate- 
gories, I cannot apply a single one to that object, unless its 
schema is given in sensuous intuition. Thus, however, I 
can never arrive at a systematical unity of all the phe- 
nomena of the internal sense. Reason, therefore, instead 
of taking from experience the concept of that which the 
soul is in reality, which would not lead us very far, prefers 
the concept of the empirical unity of all thought, and by 
representing that unity as unconditioned and original, it 
changes it into a concept of reason, or an idea of a simple 
substance, a substance unchangeable in itself (personally 
identical), and in communication with other real things 
outside it ; in one word, into a simple self-subsistent intel- 
ligence. In doing this, its object is merely to find prin- 
ciples of systematical unity for the explanation of the 
phenomena of the soul, so that all determinations may be 
received as existing in one subject, all powers, as much as 
possible, as derived from one fundamental power, and 
all changes as belonging to the states of one and the 
same permanent being, while all phe?iomena in [p. 68t,~] 
space are represented as totally different from the acts of 
thought. That simplicity of substance, etc., was only 
meant to be the schema of this regulative principle ; it is 
not assumed to be the real ground of all the properties of 
the soul. These properties may rest on quite different 
grounds, of which we know nothing ; nor could we know 
the soul even by these assumed predicates by itself, even 
if we regarded them as absolutely valid with regard to it, 
for they really constitute a mere idea which cannot be 
represented in concreto. Nothing but good can spring from 
such a psychological idea, if only we take care not to take 
it for more than an idea, that is, if we apply it only in re- 



Transcendental Dialectic 549 

lation to the systematical use of reason, with reference to 
the phenomena of our soul. For in that case no empirical 
laws of corporeal phenomena, which are of a totally 
different kind, are mixed up with the explanation of what 
belongs to the internal sense ; and no windy hypothesis 
of generation, extinction, and palingenesis of souls are ad- 
mitted. The consideration of this object of the internal 
sense remains pure and unmixed with heterogeneous mat- 
ters, while reason in its investigations is directed towards 
tracing all the grounds of explanation, as far as possible, to 
one single principle ; and this can best be achieved, [p. 684] 
nay, cannot be achieved otherwise but by such a schema 
which attributes to the soul hypothetically the character 
of a real being. The psychological idea cannot be any- 
thing but such a schema of a regulative concept. The 
very question, for instance, whether the soul by itself be 
of a spiritual nature, would have no meaning, because, by 
such a concept, I should take away not only corporeal, but 
all nature, that is, all predicates of any possible experience, 
and therefore all the conditions under which the object of 
such a concept could be thought ; and, in that case, the 
concept would have no meaning at all. 

The second regulative idea of speculative reason is the 
concept of the universe. For nature is really the only 
object given to us in regard to which reason requires 
regulative principles. Nature, however, is twofold, either 
thinking or corporeal. In order to think the internal 
possibility of the latter, that is, in order to determine the 
application of the categories to it, we require no idea, that 
is, no representation which transcends experience. Nor 
is such an idea possible in regard to it, because we are 
here guided by sensuous intuition only, different from 



550 Transcendental Dialeetie 

what it was in the case of the psychological fundamental 
concept of the I, which contains a priori a certain form of 
thought, namely, the unity of the I. There remains there- 
fore for pure reason nothing to deal with but [p. 685] 
nature in general, and the completeness of its conditions 
according to some principle. The absolute totality of the 
series of these conditions determining the derivation of all 
their members, is an idea which, though never brought to 
perfection in the empirical use of reason, may yet become 
a rule, telling us how to proceed in the explanation of 
given phenomena (whether in an ascending or descending 
line), namely, as if the series were in themselves infinite, 
that is, in indeftnitutn ; while, when reason itself is con- 
sidered as the determining cause (in freedom), in the case 
of practical principles therefore, we must proceed as if we 
had to deal, not with an object of the senses, but with one 
of the pure understanding. Here the conditions are no 
longer placed within the series of phenomena, but outside 
it, and the series of states considered, as if it had an ab- 
solute beginning through an intelligible cause. All this 
proves that cosmological ideas are nothing but regulative 
principles, and by no means constitutive, as establishing a 
real totality of such series. The remainder of this argu- 
ment may be seen in its place, namely, in the chapter on 
the Antinomy of Pure Reason. 

The third idea of pure reason, containing a merely 
relative hypothesis of a Being which is the only and all- 
sufficient cause of all cosmological series, is the idea of 
God. We have not the slightest ground to [p. 686~\ 
admit absolutely the object of that idea (to suppose it in 
itself) ; for what could enable, or even justify us in be- 
lieving or asserting a Being of the highest perfection, and 



Transcendental Dialectic 551 

absolutely necessary from its very nature, on the strength 
of its concept only, except the world with reference to 
which alone such an hypothesis may be called necessary ? 
We then perceive that the idea of it, like all speculative 
ideas, means no more than that reason requires us to con- 
sider all connection in the world according to the princi- 
ples of a systematical unity, and, therefore, as if the whole 
of it had sprung from a single all-embracing Being, as its 
highest and all-sufficient cause. We see, therefore, that 
reason can have no object here but its own formal rule in 
the extension of its empirical use, but can never aim at 
extension beyond all limits of its empirical application. 
This idea, therefore, does not involve a constitutive princi- 
ple of its use as applied to possible experience. 

The highest formal unity, which is based on concepts of 
reason alone, is the systematical and purposeful unity of 
things, and it is the speculative interest of reason which 
makes it necessary to regard all order in the world as if 
it had originated in the purpose of a supreme wisdom. 
Such a principle opens to our reason in the field of experi- 
ence quite new views, how to connect the things [p. 68y~] 
of the world according to teleological laws, and thus to 
arrive at their greatest systematical unity. The admis- 
sion of a highest intelligence, as the only cause of the 
universe, though in the idea only, can therefore always 
benefit reason, and yet never injure it. For if, with re- 
gard to the figure of the earth (which is round, though 
somewhat flattened 2 ), of mountains, and seas, etc., we 

1 The advantage which arises from the circular shape of the earth is well 
known; but few only know that its flattening, which gives it the form of a 
spheroid, alone prevents the elevations of continents, or even of smaller vol- 
canically raised mountains, from continuously and, within no very great space 



552 Transcendental Dialectic 

admit at once nothing but wise intentions of their author, 
we are enabled to make in this wise a number of impor- 
tant discoveries. If we keep to this hypothesis as a purely 
regulative principle, even error cannot hurt us much ; for 
the worst that could happen would be that, when we 
expected a teleological connection (nexus fijialis), we only 
find a mechanical or physical (nexus effect iv us) y in which 
case we merely lose an additional unity, but we [p. 688] 
do not destroy the unity of reason in its empirical applica- 
tion. And even this failure could not affect the law itself, 
in its general and teleological character. For although an 
anatomist may be convicted of error, if referring any 
member of an animal body to a purpose of which it can 
clearly be shown that it does not belong to it, it is 
entirely impossible in any given case to prove that an 
arrangement of nature, be it what it may, has no purpose 
at all. Medical physiology, therefore, enlarges its very 
limited empirical knowledge of the purposes of the mem- 
bers of an organic body by a principle inspired by pure 
reason only, so far as to admit confidently, and with the 
approbation of all intelligent persons, that everything in 
an animal has its purpose and advantage. Such a suppo- 
sition, if used constitutively, goes far beyond where our 
present observation would justify us in going, which 
shows that it is nothing but a regulative principle of rea- 
son, leading us on to the highest systematical unity, by 



of time, considerably altering the axis of the earth. The protuberance of the 
earth at the equator forms however so considerable a mountain, that the 
impetus of every other mountain can never drive it perceptibly out of its 
position with reference to the axis of the earth. And yet people do not hesi- 
tate to explain this wise arrangement simply from the equilibrium of the once 
fluid mass. 



Transcendental Dialectic 553 

the idea of an intelligent causality in the supreme cause of 
the world, and by the supposition that this, as the highest 
intelligence, is the cause of everything, according to the 
wisest design. 

But if we remove this restriction of the idea [p. 689] 
to a merely regulative use, reason is led away in many 
ways. It leaves the ground of experience, which ought 
always to show the vestiges of its progress, and ventures 
beyond it to what is inconceivable and unsearchable, be- 
coming giddy from the very height of it, and from seeing 
itself on that high standpoint entirely cut off from its 
proper work in agreement with experience. 

The first fault which arises from our using the idea of a 
Supreme Being, not regulatively only, but (contrary to the 
nature of an idea) constitutively, is what I call the indo- 
lence of reason {ignava ratio 1 ). We may so term every 
principle which causes us to look on our investigation of 
nature, wherever it may be, as absolutely complete, so 
that reason may rest as if her task were fully [p. 690] 
accomplished. Thus the task of reason is rendered very 
easy even by the psychological idea, if that idea is used as 
a constitutive principle for the explanation of the phe- 
nomena of our soul, and afterwards even for the extension 
of our knowledge of this subject beyond all possible 
experience (its state after death) ; but the natural use of 
reason, under the guidance of experience, is thus entirely 



1 This was a name given by the old dialecticians to a sophistical argument, 
which ran thus : If it is your fate that you should recover from this illness, 
you will recover, whether you send for a doctor or not. Cicero says that 
this argument was called ignava ratio, because, if we followed it, reason 
would have no use at all in life. It is for this reason that I apply the same 
name to this sophistical argument of pure reason. 



554 Transcendental Dialectic 

ruined and destroyed. The dogmatical spiritualist finds 
no difficulty in explaining the unchanging unity of the 
person, amidst all the changes of condition, from the unity 
of the thinking substance, which he imagines he perceives 
directly in the I; — or the interest which we take in 
things that are to happen after death, from the conscious- 
ness of the immaterial nature of our thinking subject, and 
so on. He dispenses with all investigations of the origin 
of these internal phenomena from physical causes, passing 
by, as it were, by a decree of transcendent reason, the 
immanent sources of knowledge given by experience. 
This may be convenient to himself, but involves a sacri- 
fice of all real insight. These detrimental consequences 
become still more palpable in the dogmatism involved in 
our idea of a supreme intelligence, and of the theological 
system of nature, erroneously based on it (physico-theol- 
ogy). For here all the aims which we observe [p. 691] 
in nature, many of which we only imagined ourselves, 
serve to make the investigation of causes extremely easy, 
if, instead of looking for them in the general mechanical 
laws of matter, we appeal directly to the unsearchable 
counsel of the supreme wisdom, imagining the efforts of 
our reason as ended, when we have really dispensed with 
its employment, which nowhere finds its proper guidance, 
except where the order of nature and the succession of 
changes, according to their own internal and general laws, 
supply it. This error may be avoided, if we do not merely 
consider certain parts of nature, such as the distribution 
of land, its structure, the constitution and direction of 
certain mountains, or even the organisation of plants and 
animals, from the standpoint of final aims, but look upon 
this systematical unity of nature as something general, in 



Trci7isce?idental Dialectic 555 

relation to the idea of a supreme intelligence. For, in 
this case, we look upon nature as founded on intelligent 
purposes, according to general laws, no particular arrange- 
ment of nature being exempt from them, but only exhibit- 
ing them more or less distinctly. We have then, in fact, 
a regulative principle of the systematical unity in a teleo- 
logical connection, though we do not determine it before- 
hand, but only look forward to it expectantly, while follow- 
ing up the physico-mechanical connection accord- [p. 692] 
ing to general laws. In this way alone can the principle of 
systematical and intelligent unity enlarge the use of rea- 
son with reference to experience, without at any time 
being prejudicial to it. 

The second error, arising from the misapprehension 
of the principle of systematical unity, is that of per- 
verted reason {perversa ratio, varepov irporepov rationis). 
The idea of systematic unity was only intended as a 
regulative principle for discovering that unity, accord- 
ing to general laws, in the connection of things, be- 
lieving that we have approached the completeness of 
its use by exactly so much as we have discovered of 
it empirically, though never able to reach it fully. In- 
stead of this, the procedure is reversed ; the reality of 
a principle of systematical unity is at once admitted and 
hypostasised, the concept of such a supreme intelligence, 
though being in itself entirely inscrutable, is determined 
anthropomorphically, and aims are afterwards imposed 
on nature violently and dictatorially, instead of looking- 
for them by means of physical investigation. Thus 
teleology, which was meant to supplement the unity of 
nature according to general laws, contributes only [693] 
to destroy it, and reason deprives itself of its own aim, 



556 Transcendental Dialectic 

namely, that of proving the existence of such an intelli- 
gent supreme cause from nature. For, if we may not 
presuppose a priori the most perfect design in nature 
as belonging to its very essence, what should direct 
us to look for it, and to try to approach by degrees to 
the highest perfection of an author, that is, to an abso- 
lutely necessary and a priori intelligible perfection ? The 
regulative principle requires us to admit absolutely, and 
as following from the very nature of things, systematical 
unity as an unity of nature, which has not only to be 
known empirically, but must be admitted a priori, though 
as yet in an indefinite form only. But if I begin with a 
supreme ordaining Being, as the ground of all things, the 
unity of nature is really surrendered as being quite 
foreign to the nature of things, purely contingent, and 
not to be known from its own general laws. Thus 
arises a vicious circle by our presupposing what, in reality, 
ought to have been proved. 

To mistake the regulative principle of the systemat- 
ical unity of nature for a constitutive principle, and to pre- 
suppose hypostatically as cause, what is only in the idea 
made the foundation for the consistent use of [p. 694] 
reason, is simply to confound reason. The investigation 
of nature pursues its own course, guided by the chain 
of natural causes only, according to general laws. It 
knows the idea of an author, but not in order to derive 
from it that system of purposes which it tries to discover 
everywhere, but in order to recognise his existence from 
those purposes, which are sought in the essence of 
the things of nature, and, if possible, also in the essence 
of all things in general, and consequently to recognise his 
existence as absolutely necessary. Whether this succeeds 



Transcendental Dialectic 557 

or not, the idea itself remains always true, as well as its 
use, if only it is restricted to the conditions of a merely 
regulative principle. 

Complete unity of design constitutes perfection (abso- 
lutely considered). If we do not find such perfection 
in the nature of the things which form the object of ex- 
perience, that is, of all our objectively valid knowledge; 
if we do not find it in the general and necessary laws of 
nature, how shall we thence infer the idea of a supreme 
and absolutely necessary perfection of an original Being, 
as the origin of all causality ? The greatest systematical 
and, therefore, well-planned unity teaches us, and first 
enables us, to make the widest use of human reason, and 
that idea is, therefore, inseparably connected with [p. 695] 
the very nature of our reason. That idea becomes, in 
fact, to us a law, and hence it is very natural for us 
to assume a corresponding lawgiving reason (intellectus 
archetypus) from which, as the object of our reason, all 
systematical unity of nature should be derived. 

When discussing the antinomy of pure reason, we 
remarked that all questions raised by pure reason must 
admit of an answer, and that the excuse derived from the 
natural limits of our knowledge, which in many ques- 
tions concerning nature is as inevitable as it is just, can- 
not be admitted here, because questions are here placed 
before us through the very nature of our reason, refer- 
ring entirely to its own natural constitution, and not to 
the nature of things. We have now an opportunity of 
confirming this assertion of ours, which at first sight may 
have appeared rash, with regard to the two questions in 
which pure reason takes the greatest interest, and of thus 
bringing to perfection our considerations on the Dialectic 
of pure reason. 



558 Transcendental Dialectic 

If, then, we are asked the question (with reference to 
a transcendental theology), 1 First, whether there is some- 
thing different from the world, containing the [p. 696] 
ground of the order of the world and of its connection 
according to general laws ? our answer is, Certainly there 
is. For the world is a sum of phenomena, and there 
must, therefore, be some transcendental ground of it, that 
is, a ground to be thought by the pure understanding 
only. If, secondly, we are asked whether that Being is 
a substance of the greatest reality, necessary, etc. ? our 
answer is, that such a question has no meaning at all. 
For all the categories by which I can try to frame to my- 
self a concept of such an object admit of none but an 
empirical use, and have no meaning at all, unless they 
are applied to objects of possible experience, that is, to 
the world of sense. Outside that field they are mere 
titles of concepts, which we may admit, but by which we 
can understand nothing. If, thirdly, the question is 
asked, whether we may not at least conceive this Being, 
which is different from the world, in analogy with the 
objects of experience? our answer is, Certainly we may, 
but only as an object in the idea, and not in the 
reality, that is, in so far only as it remains a [p. 697] 
substratum, unknown to us, of the systematic unity, 
order, and design of the world, which reason is obliged 
to adopt as a regulative principle in the investigation of 

1 After what I have said before about the psychological idea, and its proper 
destination to serve as a regulative principle only for the use of reason, there 
is no necessity for my discussing separately and in full detail the transcendental 
illusion which leads us to represent hypostatically that systematical unity of 
the manifold phenomena of the internal sense. The procedure would here be 
very similar to that which we are following in our criticism of the theological 
ideal. 



Tra?iscendcntal Dialectic 559 

nature. Nay, more, we need not be afraid to admit cer- 
tain anthropomorphisms in that idea, which favour the 
regulative principle of our investigations. For it always 
remains an idea only, which is never referred directly to 
a Being, different from the world, but only to the regu- 
lative principle of the systematical unity of the world, 
and this by some schema of it, namely, that of a supreme 
intelligence, being the author of it, for the wisest pur- 
poses. It was not intended that by it we should try to 
form a conception of what tjiat original cause of the 
unity of the world may be by itself ; it was only meant 
to teach us how to use it, or rather its idea, with refer- 
ence to the systematical use of reason, applied to the 
things of the world. 

But, surely, people will proceed to ask, we may, accord- 
ing to this, admit a wise and omnipotent Author of the 
world ? Certainly, we answer, and not only we may, but 
we must. In that case, therefore, we surely extend our 
knowledge beyond the field of possible experience ? By 
no means. For we have only presupposed a something 
of which we have no conception whatever as to [p. 698] 
what it is by itself (as a purely transcendental object). . We 
have only, with reference to the systematical and well- 
designed order of the world, which we must presuppose, 
if we are to study nature at all, presented to ourselves 
that unknown Being in analogy with what is an empirical 
concept, namely, an intelligence ; that is, we have, with 
reference to the purposes and the perfection which de- 
pend on it, attributed to it those very qualities on which, 
according to the conditions of our reason, such a syste- 
matical unity may depend. That idea, therefore, is 
entirely founded on the employment of our reason in the 



560 Transcendental Dialectic 

world, and if we were to attribute to it absolute and 
objective validity, we should be forgetting that it is only 
a Being: in the idea which we think : and as we should 
then be taking our start from a cause, that cannot be 
determined by mundane considerations, we should no 
longer be able to employ that principle in accordance 
with the empirical use of reason. 

But people will go on to ask, May we not then in this 
way use that concept, and the supposition of a Supreme 
Being in a rational consideration of the world ? No doubt 
we may, and it was for that very purpose that that idea 
of reason was established. And if it be asked whether 
we may look upon arrangements in nature which have 
all the appearance of design, as real designs, and trace 
them back to a divine will, though with the [p. 699] 
intervention of certain arrangements in the world, we 
answer again, Yes, but only on condition that it be the 
same to you whether we say that the divine wisdom has 
arranged everything for the highest purposes, or whether 
we take the idea of the supreme wisdom as our rule in 
the investigation of nature, and as the principle of its 
systematical and well-planned unity according to general 
laws, even when we are not able to perceive that unity. 
In other words, it must be the same to you, when you 
do perceive it, whether we say, God has wisely willed it 
so, or nature has wisely arranged it so. For it was that 
greatest systematical and well-planned unity, required by 
your reason as the regulative principle of all investigation 
of nature, which gave you the right to admit the idea 
of a supreme intelligence as the schema of that regulative 
principle. As much of design, therefore, as you discover 
in the world, according to that principle, so much of con- 



Transcende?ital Dialectic 561 

firmation has the legitimacy of your idea received. But 
as that principle was only intended for finding the neces- 
sary and greatest possible unity in nature, we shall, no 
doubt, owe that unity, so far as we may find it, to our 
idea of a Supreme Being; but we cannot, without con- 
tradicting ourselves, ignore the general laws of nature 
for which that idea was adopted, or look upon the 
designs of nature as contingent and hyper- [p. 700] 
physical in their origin. For we were not justified in 
admitting a Being endowed with those qualities as above 
nature (hyperphysical), but only in using the idea of it 
in order to be able to look on all phenomena x as being 
systematically connected among themselves, in analogy 
with a causal determination. 

For the same reason we are justified, not only in repre- 
senting to ourselves the cause of the world in our idea 
according to a subtle kind of anthropomorphism (without 
which we can think nothing of it), as a Being endowed 
with understanding, the feelings of pleasure and displeas- 
ure, and accordingly with desire and will, but also in at- 
tributing to it infinite perfection, which therefore far 
transcends any perfection known to us from the empirical 
knowledge of the order of the world. For the regulative 
law of systematical unity requires that we should study 
nature as if there existed in it everywhere, with the 
greatest possible variety, an infinitely systematical and 
well-planned unity. And although we can discover but 
little of that perfection of the world, it is nevertheless a 
law of our reason, always to look for it and to expect it ; 
and it must be beneficial, and can never be hurtful, to 

1 Instead of der Ersckeinungen read die Erscheinungen. 

2 o 



562 Transcendental Dialectic 

carry on the investigation of nature according to this 
principle. But in admitting this fundamental [p. 701] 
idea of a Supreme Author, it is clear that I do not admit 
the existence and knowledge of such a Being, but its idea 
only, and that in reality I do not derive anything from 
that Being, but only from the idea of it, that is, from the 
nature of the things of the world, according to such an 
idea. It seems also, as if a certain, though undeveloped 
consciousness of the true use of this concept of reason 
had dictated the modest and reasonable language of phi- 
losophers of all times, when they use such expressions as 
the wisdom and providence of nature as synonymous with 
divine wisdom, nay, even prefer the former expression, 
when dealing with speculative reason only, as avoiding 
the pretension of a greater assertion than we are entitled 
to make, and at the same time restricting reason to its 
proper field, namely, nature. 

Thus we find that pure reason, which at first seemed 
to promise nothing less than extension of our knowledge 
beyond all limits of experience, contains, if properly under- 
stood, nothing but regulative principles, which indeed 
postulate greater unity than the empirical use of the 
understanding can ever achieve, but which, by the very 
fact that they place the goal which has to be reached at 
so great a distance, carry the agreement of the under- 
standing with itself by means of systematical [p. 702] 
unity to the highest possible degree ; while, if they are 
misunderstood and mistaken for constitutive principles of 
transcendent knowledge, they produce, by a brilliant but 
deceptive illusion, some kind of persuasion and imaginary 
knowledge, but, at the same time, constant contradictions 
and disputes. 



Transcendental Dialectic 563 

Thus all human knowledge begins with intuitions, ad- 
vances to concepts, and ends with ideas. Although with 
reference to every one of these three elements, it pos- 
sesses a priori sources of knowledge, which at first sight 
seemed to despise the limits of all experience, a perfect 
criticism soon convinces us, that reason, in its speculative 
use, can never get with these elements beyond the field 
of possible experience, and that it is the true destination 
of that highest faculty of knowledge to use all methods 
and principles of reason with one object only, namely, to 
follow up nature into her deepest recesses, according to 
every principle of unity, the unity of design being the 
most important, but never to soar above its limits, outside 
of which there is for us nothing but empty space. No 
doubt, the critical examination of all propositions which 
seemed to be able to enlarge our knowledge [p. 703] 
beyond real experience, as given in the transcendental 
Analytic, has fully convinced us that they could never 
lead to anything more than to a possible experience ; and, 
if people were not suspicious even of the clearest, but 
abstract and general doctrines, and charming and specious 
prospects did not tempt us to throw off the restraint of 
those doctrines, we might indeed have dispensed with 
the laborious examination of all the dialectical witnesses 
which a transcendent reason brings into court in support 
of her pretensions. We knew beforehand with perfect 
certainty that all these pretensions, though perhaps hon- 
estly meant, were absolutely untenable, because they re- 
late to a kind of knowledge to which man can never 
attain. But we know that there is no end of talk, unless 
the true cause of the illusion, by which even the wisest 
are deceived, has been clearly exhibited. We also know 



564 Transcendental Dialectic 

that the analysis of all our transcendent knowledge into 
its elements (as a study of our own internal nature) has 
no little value in itself, and to a philosopher is really a 
matter of duty. We therefore thought that it was not 
only necessary to follow up the whole of this vain treat- 
ment of speculative reason to its first sources, but con- 
sidered it advisable also, as the dialectical illusion does 
here not only deceive the judgment, but, owing to the 
interest which we take in the judgment, possesses and 
always will possess a certain natural and irresist- [p. 704] 
ible charm, to write down the records of this lawsuit in 
full detail, and to deposit them in the archives of human 
reason, to prevent for the future all errors of a similar 
kind. 



CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON 

[p- 705] 



II 

METHOD OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 



THE 

METHOD OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 

If we look upon the whole knowledge of pure [p. 707] 
and speculative reason as an edifice of which we possess 
at least the idea within ourselves, we may say that in the 
Elements of Transcendentalism we made an estimate of 
the materials and determined for what kind of edifice and 
of what height and solidity they would suffice. We found 
that although we had thought of a tower that would reach 
to the sky, the supply of materials would suffice for a 
dwelling-house only, sufficiently roomy for all our business 
on the level plain of experience, and high enough to enable 
us to survey it : and that the original bold undertaking 
could not but fail for want of materials, not to mention 
the confusion of tongues which inevitably divided the 
labourers in their views of the building, and scattered 
them over all the world, where each tried to erect his 
own building according to his own plan. At present, 
however, we are concerned not so much with the material 
as with the plan, and though we have been warned not to 
venture blindly on a plan which may be beyond our 
powers, we cannot altogether give up the erection of a 
solid dwelling, but have to make the plan for a building 
in proportion to the material which we possess, and suf- 
ficient for all our real wants. This determination of the 
formal conditions of a complete system of pure reason I 

5 6 7 



568 Method of Transcendentalism 

call the Method of Transcendentalism. We [p. 708] 
shall here have to treat of a discipline, a canon, an archi- 
tectonic, and lastly, a history of pure reason, and shall 
have to do, from a transcendental point of view, what 
the schools attempt, but fail to carry out properly, with 
regard to the use of the understanding in general, under 
the name of practical logic The reason of this failure is 
that general logic is not limited to any particular kind of 
knowledge, belonging to the understanding (not for in- 
stance to its pure knowledge), nor to certain objects. 
It cannot, therefore, without borrowing knowledge from 
other sciences, do more than produce titles of possible 
methods and technical terms which are used in different 
sciences in reference to their systematical arrangement, 
so that the pupil becomes acquainted with names only, 
the meaning and application of which he has to learn 
afterwards. 



METHOD OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 
CHAPTER I 

THE DISCIPLINE OF PURE REASON 

Negative judgments, being negative not only in their 
logical form, but in their contents also, do not enjoy a very 
high reputation among persons desirous of increasing 
human knowledge. They are even looked upon as 
jealous enemies of our never-ceasing desire for [p. 709] 
knowledge, and we have almost to produce an apology, in 
order to secure for them toleration, or favour and esteem. 

No doubt, all propositions may logically be expressed 
as negative : but when we come to the question whether 
the contents of our knowledge are enlarged or restricted 
by a judgment, we find that the proper object of negative 
judgments is solely to prevent error. Hence negative 
propositions, intended to prevent erroneous knowledge 
in cases where error is never possible, may no doubt be 
very true, but they are empty, they do not answer any 
purpose, and sound therefore often absurd ; like the well- 
known utterance of a rhetorician, that Alexander could not 
have conquered any countries without an army. 

But in cases where the limits of our possible knowledge 
are very narrow, where the temptation to judge is great, 
the illusion which presents itself very deceptive, and the 
evil consequences of error very considerable, the negative 

569 



570 Discipline of Pure Reason 

element, though it teaches us only how to avoid errors, 
has even more value than much of that positive instruction 
which adds to the stock of our knowledge. The restraint 
which checks our constant inclination to deviate from 
certain rules, and at last destroys it, is called discipline. 
It is different from culture, which is intended to form a 
certain kind of skill, without destroying another kind 
which is already present. In forming a talent, therefore, 
which has in itself an impulse to manifest itself, [p. 710] 
discipline will contribute a negative, 1 culture and doctrine 
a positive, influence. 

That our temperament and various talents which like 
to indulge in free and unchecked exercise (such as imag- 
ination and wit) require some kind of discipline, will easily 
be allowed by everybody. But that reason, whose proper 
duty it is to prescribe a discipline to all other endeavours, 
should itself require such discipline, may seem strange 
indeed. It has in fact escaped that humiliation hitherto, 
because, considering the solemnity and thorough self- 
possession in its behaviour, no one has suspected it of 
thoughtlessly putting imaginations in the place of concepts, 
and words in the place of things. 

In its empirical use reason does not require such 
criticism, because its principles are constantly subject 
to the test of experience. Nor is such criticism [p. 711] 
required in mathematics, where the concepts of reason 



1 I am well aware that in the language of the schools, discipline is used as 
synonymous with instruction. But there are so many cases in which the 
former term, in the sense of restraint, is carefully distinguished from the latter 
in the sense of teachings and the nature of things makes it so desirable to pre- 
serve the only suitable expressions for that distinction, that I hope that the 
former term may never be allowed to be used in any but a negative meaning. 



Discipline of Pure Reason 571 

must at once be represented in concreto in pure intui- 
tion, so that everything unfounded and arbitrary is at 
once discovered. But when neither empirical nor pure 
intuition keeps reason in a straight groove, that is, when 
it is used transcendently and according to mere con- 
cepts, the discipline to restrain its inclination to go be- 
yond the narrow limits of possible experience, and to 
keep it from extravagance and error is so necessary, that 
the whole philosophy of pure reason is really concerned 
with that one negative discipline only. Single errors 
may be corrected by censure, and their causes removed 
by criticism. But when, as in pure reason, we are met 
by a whole system of illusions and fallacies, well connected 
among themselves and united by common principles, 
a separate negative code seems requisite, which, under 
the name of a discipline ; should erect a system of caution 
and self-examination, founded on the nature of- reason 
and of the objects of its use, before which no false sophis- 
tical illusion could stand, but should at once betray itself 
in spite of all excuses. 

It should be well borne in mind, however, [p. 712] 
that in this second division of the transcendental critique, 
I mean to direct the discipline of pure reason not to its 
contents, but only to the method of its knowledge. The 
former task has been performed in the Elements of Tran- 
scendentalism. There is so much similarity in the use 
of reason, whatever be the subject to which it is applied, 
and yet, so far as this use is to be transcendental, it 
is so essentially different from every other, that, with- 
out the warning voice of a discipline, especially devised 
for that purpose, it would be impossible to avoid errors 
arising necessarily from the improper application of 



572 Discipline of Pure Reason 

methods, which are suitable to reason in other spheres, 
only not quite here. 



METHOD OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 
Section I 

The Discipline of Pure Reason in its Dogmatical Use 

The science of mathematics presents the most brill- 
iant example of how pure reason may successfully enlarge 
its domain without the aid of experience. Such exam- 
ples are always contagious, particularly when the faculty 
is the same, which naturally flatters itself that it will 
meet with the same success in other cases which it has 
had in one. Thus pure reason hopes to be able to extend 
its domain as successfully and as thoroughly [p. 713] 
in its transcendental as in its mathematical employment ; 
particularly if it there follows the same method which 
has proved of such decided advantage elsewhere. It is, 
therefore, of great consequence for us to know whether 
the method of arriving at apodictic certainty, which in 
the former science was called mathematical, be identical 
with that which is to lead us to the same certainty in 
philosophy, and would have to be called dogmatic. 

PhilosopJiical knowledge is that which reason gains from 
concepts, mathematical, that which it gains from the con- 
struction of concepts. By constructing a concept I mean 
representing a priori the intuition corresponding to it. 
For the construction of a concept, therefore, a non-empiri- 
cal intuition is required which, as an intuition, is a single 
object, but which, nevertheless, as the construction of a 



Discipline of Pure Reason 573 

concept (of a general representation) must express in the 
representation something that is generally valid for all 
possible intuitions which fall under the same concept. 
Thus I construct a triangle by representing the object 
corresponding to that concept either by mere imagination, 
in the pure intuition, or, afterwards on paper also in the 
empirical intuition, and in both cases entirely a priori 
without having borrowed the original from any expe- 
rience. The particular figure drawn on the [p. 714] 
paper is empirical, but serves nevertheless to express 
the concept without any detriment to its generality, be- 
cause, in that empirical intuition, we consider always 
the act of the construction of the concept only, to which 
many determinations, as, for instance, the magnitude of 
the sides and the angles, are quite indifferent, these differ- 
ences, which do not change the concept of a triangle, 
being entirely ignored. 

Philosophical knowledge, therefore, considers the par- 
ticular in the general only, mathematical, the general 
in the particular, nay, even in the individual, all this, 
however, a priori, and by means of reason ; so that, as 
an individual figure is determined by certain general con- 
ditions of construction, the object of the concept, of which 
this individual figure forms only the schema, must be 
thought of as universally determined. 

The essential difference between these two modes 
of the knowledge of reason consists, therefore, in the 
form, and does not depend on any difference in their 
matter or objects. Those who thought they could dis- 
tinguish philosophy from mathematics by saying that 
the former was concerned with quality only, the latter 
with quantity only, mistook effect for cause. It is owing 



574 Discipline of Pure Reason 

to the form of mathematical knowledge that it can refer 
to quanta only, because it is only the concept of quanti- 
ties that admits of construction, that is, of a priori [p. 715] 
representation in intuition, while qualities cannot be repre- 
sented in any but empirical intuition. I Knee reason can 
gain a knowledge of qualities by concepts only. No one 
can take an intuition corresponding to the concept of 
reality from anywhere except from experience ; we can 
never lay hold of it a priori by ourselves, and before we 
have had an empirical consciousness of it. We can form 
to ourselves an intuition of a eone, from its concept alone, 
and without any empirical assistance, but the colour of 
this cone must be given before, in some experience or 
other. I cannot represent in intuition the concept of 
a cause in general in any way except by an example 
supplied by experience, etc. Besides, philosophy treats of 
quantities quite as much as mathematics ; for instance, 
of totality, infinity, etc., and mathematics treats also of 
the difference between lines and planes, as spaces of 
different quality, it treats further of the continuity of ex- 
tension as one of its qualities. But, though in such 
cases both have a common object, the manner in which 
reason treats it is totally different in philosophy and 
mathematics. The former is concerned with general con- 
cepts only, the other can do nothing with the pure con- 
cept, but proceeds at once to intuition, in which it looks 
upon the concept in concreto ; yet not in an [p. 716] 
empirical intuition, but in an intuition which it represents 
a priori, that is, which it has constructed and in which, 
whatever follows from the general conditions of the con- 
struction, must be valid in general of the object of the 
constructed concept also. 



Discipline of Pure Reason 575 

Let us give to a philosopher the concept of a triangle, 
and let him find out, in his own way, what relation the 
sum of its angles bears to a right angle. Nothing is 
given him but the concept of a figure, enclosed within 
three straight lines, and with it the concept of as many 
angles. Now he may ponder on that concept as long 
as he likes, he will never discover anything new in it. 
He may analyse the concept of a straight line or of an 
angle, or of the number three, and render them more 
clear, but he will never arrive at other qualities which 
are not contained in those concepts. But now let the 
geometrician treat the same question. He will begin 
at once with constructing a triangle. As he knows that 
two right angles are equal to the sum of all the contiguous 
angles which proceed from one point in a straight line, 
he produces one side of his triangle, thus forming two 
adjacent angles which together are equal to two right 
angles. He then divides the exterior of these angles 
by drawing a line parallel with the opposite side of the 
triangle, and sees that an exterior adjacent angle has 
been formed, which is equal to an interior, etc. In this 
way he arrives, through a chain of conclusions, though 
always guided by intuition, at a thoroughly [p. 717] 
convincing and general solution of the question. 

In mathematics, however, we construct not only quan- 
tities {quanta) as in geometry, but also mere quantity 
(quantitas) as in algebra, where the quality of the object, 
which has to be thought according to this quantitative 
concept, is entirely ignored. We then adopt a certain 
notation for all constructions of quantities (numbers), 
such as addition, subtraction, extraction of roots, etc., 
and, after having denoted also the general concept of 



576 Discipline of Pun Reason 

quantities according to their different relations, we rep- 
resent in intuition according to general rules, every opera- 
tion which is produced and modified by quantity. Thus 
when one quantity is to be divided by another, we place 
the signs of both together according to the form denot- 
ing division, etc., and we thus arrive, by means of a sym- 
bolical construction in algebra, quite as well as by an 
ostensive or geometrical construction of the objects 
themselves in geometry, at results which our discursive 
knowledge could never have reached by the aid of mere 
conceptions. 

What may be the cause of this difference between two 
persons, the philosopher and the mathematician, both 
practising the art of reason, the former following his 
path according to concepts, the latter according to in- 
tuitions, which he represents a priori according to con- 
cepts ? If we remember what has been said [p. 718] 
before in the Elements of Transcendentalism, the cause 
is clear. We are here concerned not with analytical 
propositions, which can be produced by a mere analysis 
of concepts (here the philosopher would no doubt have 
an advantage over the mathematician), but with syn- 
thetical propositions, and synthetical propositions that 
can be known a priori. We are not intended here to 
consider what we are really thinking in our concept of 
the triangle (this would be a mere definition), but we are 
meant to go beyond that concept, in order to arrive at 
properties which are not contained in the concept, but 
nevertheless belong to it. This is impossible, except by 
our determining our object according to the conditions 
either of empirical, or of pure intuition. The former 
would give us an empirical proposition only, through 



Discipline of Pure Reason 577 

the actual measuring of the three angles. Such a propo- 
sition would be without the character of either generality 
or necessity, and does not, therefore, concern us here at 
all. The second procedure consists in the mathematical 
and here the geometrical construction, by means of which 
I add in a pure intuition, just as I may do in the empirical 
intuition, everything that belongs to the schema of a tri- 
angle in general and, therefore, to its concept, and thus 
arrive at general synthetical propositions. 

I should therefore in vain philosophise, that is, reflect 
discursively on the triangle, without ever getting beyond 
the mere definition with which I ought to have begun. 
There is no doubt a transcendental synthesis, [p. 719] 
consisting of mere concepts, and in which the philosopher 
alone can hope to be successful. Such a synthesis, how- 
ever, never relates to more than a thing in general, and to 
the conditions under which its perception could be- a pos- 
sible experience. In the mathematical problems, on the 
contrary, all this, together with the question of existence, 
does not concern us, but the properties of objects in them- 
selves only (without any reference to their existence), and 
those properties again so far only as they are connected 
with their concept. 

We have tried by this example to show how great a 
difference there is between the discursive use of reason, 
according to concepts, and its intuitive use, through the 
construction of concepts. The question now arises what 
can be the cause that makes this twofold use of reason 
necessary, and how can we discover whether in any given 
argument the former only, or the latter use also, takes 
place ? 

All our knowledge relates, in the end, to possible intui- 

2P 



578 Discipline of Pure Reason 

tions, for it is by thorn alone that an object can be given. 
A concept a priori (or a non-empirical concept) contains 
either a pure intuition, in which case it can be con- 
structed, or it contains nothing but the synthesis of 
possible intuitions, which are not given a priori, and in 
that case, though we may use it for synthetical [p. 720] 
and a priori judgments, such judgments can only be 
discursive, according to concepts, and never intuitive, 
through the construction of the concept. 

There is no intuition a priori except space and time, 
the mere forms of phenomena. A concept of them, as 
quanta, can be represented a priori in intuition, that is, 
can be constructed either at the same time with their 
quality (figure), or as quantity only (the mere synthesis 
of the manifold-homogeneous), by means of number. 
The matter of phenomena, however, by which tilings 
are given us in space and time, can be represented in 
perception only, that is a posteriori. The one concept 
which a priori represents the empirical contents of phe- 
nomena is the concept of a thing in general, and the 
synthetical knowledge which we may have a priori of a 
thing in general, can give us nothing but the mere rule 
of synthesis, to be applied to what perception may present 
to us a posteriori, but never an a priori intuition of a real 
object, such an intuition being necessarily empirical. 

Synthetical propositions with regard to things in gen- 
eral, the intuition of which does not admit of being given 
a priori, are called transcendental. Transcendental prop- 
ositions, therefore, can never be given through a con- 
struction of concepts, but only according to concepts a 
priori. They only contain the rule, according to which 
we must look empirically for a certain synthetical unity 



Discipliiie of Pare Reason 579 

of what cannot be represented in intuition a [p. 721] 
priori (perceptions). They can never represent any one 
of their concepts a priori, but can do this only a poste- 
riori, that is, by means of experience, which itself be- 
comes possible according to those synthetical principles 
only. 

If we are to form a synthetical judgment of any con- 
cept, we must proceed beyond that concept to the intui- 
tion in which it is given. For if we kept within that 
which is given in the concept, the judgment could only be 
analytical and an explanation of the concept, in accord- 
ance with what we have conceived in it. I may, however, 
pass from the conception to the pure or empirical intui- 
tion which corresponds to it, in order thus to consider 
it in concreto, and thus to discover what belongs to the 
object of the concept, whether a priori or a posteriori. 
The former consists in rational or mathematical 'know- 
ledge, arrived at by the construction of the concept, the 
latter in the purely empirical (mechanical) knowledge 
which can never supply us with necessary and apodictic 
propositions. Thus I might analyse my empirical con- 
cept of gold, without gaining anything beyond being 
able to enumerate everything that I can really think by 
this word. This might yield a logical improvement of 
my knowledge, but no increase or addition. If, how- 
ever, I take the material which is known by the name 
of gold, I can make observations on it, and these will 
yield me different synthetical, but empirical [p. 722] 
propositions. Again, I might construct the mathemati- 
cal concept of a triangle, that is, give it a priori in intui- 
tion, and gain in this manner a synthetical but rational 
knowledge of it. But when the transcendental concept 



580 Discipline of Pure Reason 

of a reality, a substance, a power, etc., is given me, that 
concept denotes neither an empirical nor a pure intuition, 
but merely the synthesis of empirical intuitions, which, 
being empirical, cannot be given a priori. No determin- 
ing synthetical proposition therefore can spring from it, 
because the synthesis cannot a priori pass beyond to the 
intuition that corresponds to it, but only a principle of 
the synthesis l of possible empirical intuitions. 

A transcendental proposition, therefore, is synthetical 
knowledge acquired by reason, according to mere con- 
cepts ; and it is discursive, because through it alone 
synthetical unity of empirical knowledge becomes possi- 
ble, while it cannot give us any intuition a priori. 

We see, therefore, that reason is used in two [p. 723] 
ways which, though they share in common the generality 
of their knowledge and its production a priori, yet diverge 
considerably afterwards, because in each phenomenon 
(and no object can be given us, except as a phenomenon), 
there are two elements, the form of intuition (space and 
time), which can be known and determined entirely a 
priori, and the matter (the physical) or the contents, 
something which exists in space and time, and therefore 
contains an existence corresponding to sensation. As 
regards the latter, which can never be given in a defi- 
nite form except empirically, we can have nothing a 
priori except indefinite concepts of the synthesis of pos- 

1 In the concept of cause I really pass beyond the empirical concept of an 
event, but not to the intuition which represents the concept of cause in con- 
crete, but to the conditions of time in general, which in experience might be 
found in accordance with the concept of cause. I therefore proceed here, 
according to concepts only, but cannot proceed by means of the construction 
of concepts, because the concept is only a rule for the synthesis of perceptions, 
which are not pure intuitions, and therefore cannot be given a priori. 



Discipline of Pare Reaso7i 581 

sible sensations, in so far as they belong to the unity of 
apperception (in a possible experience). As regards the 
former, we can determine a priori our concepts in intui- 
tion, by creating to ourselves in space and time, through 
a uniform synthesis, the objects themselves, considering 
them simply as quanta. The former is called the use 
of reason according to concepts ; and here we can do 
nothing more than to bring phenomena under concepts, 
according to their real contents, which therefore can 
be determined empirically only, that is a posteriori 
(though in accordance with those concepts as rules of 
an empirical synthesis). The latter is the use [p. 724] 
of reason through the construction of concepts, which, 
as they refer to an intuition a priori, can for that reason 
be given a priori, and defined in pure intuition, without 
any empirical data. To consider everything which exists 
(everything in space or time) whether, and how ,far, it 
is a qua7itnm or not ; to consider that we must repre- 
sent in it either existence, or absence of existence ; to 
consider how far this something which fills space or 
time is a primary substratum, or merely determination 
of it ; to consider again whether its existence is related 
to something else as cause or effect, or finally, whether 
it stands isolated or in reciprocal dependence on others, 
with reference to existence, — this and the possibility, 
reality, and necessity of its existence, or their opposites, 
all belong to that knowledge of reason, derived from 
concepts, which is called philosophical. But to deter- 
mine a priori an intuition in space (figure), to divide 
time (duration), or merely to know the general character 
of the synthesis of one and the same thing in time and 
space, and the quantity of an intuition in general which 



582 Discipline of Putt Reason 

arises from it (number), all this is the work of reason by 
means of the construction of concepts, and is called matlic- 
niatical. 

The great success which attends reason in its mathe- 
matical use produces naturally the expectation that it, or 
rather its method, would have the same success outside 
the field of quantities also, by reducing all concepts to 
intuitions which may be given a priori, and by [p. 725] 
which the whole of nature might be conquered, while pure 
philosophy, with its discursive concepts a priori, does 
nothing but bungle in every part of nature, without being 
able to render the reality of those concepts intuitive a 
priori, and thereby legitimatised. Nor does there seem 
to be any lack of confidence on the part of those who are 
masters in the art of mathematics, or of high expectations 
on the part of the public at large, as to their ability of 
achieving success, if only they would try it. For as they 
have hardly ever philosophised on mathematics (which is 
indeed no easy task), they never think of the specific dif- 
ference between the two uses of reason which we have 
just explained. Current and empirical rules, borrowed 
from the ordinary operations of reason, are then accepted 
instead of axioms. From what quarter the concepts of 
space and time with which alone (as the original quanta) 
they have to deal, may have come to them, they do not 
care to enquire, nor do they see any use in investigating 
the origin of the pure concepts of the understanding, and 
with it the extent of their validity, being satisfied to use 
them as they are. In all this no blame would attach to 
them, if only they did not overstep their proper limits, 
namely, those of nature. But as it is, they lose them- 
selves, without being aware of it, away from the field of 



Discipline of Pure Reason 583 

sensibility on the uncertain ground of pure and even 
transcendental concepts {instabilis tellies, innabilis nnda) 
where they are neither able to stand nor to [p. 726] 
swim, taking only a few hasty steps, the vestiges of which 
are soon swept away, while their steps in mathematics 
become a highway, on which the latest posterity may 
march on with perfect confidence. 

We have chosen it as our duty to determine with 
accuracy and certainty the limits of pure reason in its 
transcendental use. These transcendental efforts, how- 
ever, have this peculiar character that, in spite of the 
strongest and clearest warnings, they continue to inspire 
us with new hopes, before the attempt is entirely surren- 
dered at arriving beyond the limits of experience at the 
charming fields of an intellectual world. It is necessary 
therefore to cut away the last anchor of that fantastic 
hope, and to show that the employment of the mathemati- 
cal method cannot be of the slightest use for this kind of 
knowledge, unless it be in displaying its own deficiencies ; 
and that the art of measuring and philosophy are two 
totally different things, though they are mutually useful 
to each other in natural science, and that the method of 
the one can never be imitated by the other. 

The exactness of mathematics depends on definitions, 
axioms, and demonstrations. I shall content myself with 
showing that none of these can be achieved or imitated by 
the philosopher in the sense in which they are understood 
by the mathematician. I hope to show at the [p. 727] 
same time that the art of measuring, or geometry, will by 
its method produce nothing in philosophy but card-houses, 
while the philosopher with his method produces in mathe- 
matics nothing but vain babble. It is the very essence of 



584 Discipline of Pure Reason 

philosophy to teach the limits of knowledge, and even the 
mathematician, unless his talent is limited already by nat- 
ure and restricted to its proper work, cannot decline the 
warnings of philosophy or altogether defy them. 

I. Of Definitions. To define, as the very name implies, 
means only to represent the complete concept of a thing 
within its limits and in its primary character. 1 From this 
point of view, an empirical concept cannot be defined^ but 
can be explained only. For, as we have in an empiri- 
cal concept some predicates only belonging to a certain 
class of sensuous objects, we are never certain whether by 
the word which denotes one and the same object, we do 
not think at one time a greater, at another a smaller num- 
ber of predicates. Thus one man may by the [p. 728] 
concept of gold think, in addition to weight, colour, mallea- 
bility, the quality of its not rusting, while another may 
know nothing of the last. We use certain predicates so 
long only as they are required for distinction. New obser- 
vations add and remove certain predicates, so that the 
concept never stands within safe limits. And of what 
use would it be to define an empirical concept, as for in- 
stance that of water, because, when we speak of water and 
its qualities, we do not care much what is thought by that 
word, but proceed at once to experiments ? the word itself 
with its few predicates being a designation only and not a 
concept, so that a so-called definition would be no more 



1 Completeness means clearness and sufficiency of predicates; limits mean 
precision, no more predicates being given than belong to the complete con- 
cept; in its primary character means that the determination of these limits 
is not derived from anything else, and therefore in need of any proof, because 
this would render the so-called definition incapable of standing at the head of 
all the judgments regarding its object. 



Discipline of Pure Reas.07i 585 

than a determination of the word. Secondly, if we rea- 
soned accurately, no a priori given concept can be defined, 
such as substance, cause, right, equity, etc. For I can 
never be sure that the clear representation of a given but 
still confused concept has been completely analysed, unless 
I know that such representation is adequate to the object. 
As its concept, however, such as it is given, may contain 
many obscure representations which we pass by in our 
analysis, although we use them always in the practical 
application of the concept, the completeness of the analy- 
sis of my concept must always remain doubtful, and can 
only be rendered probable by means of apt examples, al- 
though never apodictically certain. I should [p. 729] 
therefore prefer to use the term exposition rather than 
definition, as being more modest, and more likely to be 
admitted to a certain extent by a critic who reserves his 
doubts as to its completeness. As therefore it is impossi- 
ble to define either empirically or a priori given concepts, 
there remain arbitrary concepts only on which such an 
experiment may be tried. In such a case I can always 
define my concept, because I ought certainly to know 
what I wish to think, the concept being made intentionally 
by myself, and not given to me either by the nature of the 
understanding or by experience. But I can never say 
that I have thus defined a real object. For if the concept 
depends on empirical conditions, as, for instance, a ship's 
chronometer, the object itself and its possibility are not 
given by this arbitrary concept ; it does not even tell us 
whether there is an object corresponding to it, so that my 
explanation should be called a declaration (of my project) 
rather than a definition of an object. Thus there remain 
no concepts fit for definition except those which contain 



58C> Discipline of Pure Reason 

an arbitrary synthesis that can be constructed <r priori. 
It follows, therefore, that mathematics only can possess 
definitions, because it is in mathematics alone that we 
represent a priori in intuition the object which we think, 
and that ob: not therefore contain either more or 

le>s than the concept, because the concept of [p. 730] 
the object wis given by the definition in its primary char- 
acter, that is, without deriving the definition from anything 
else. The German language has but the one word Erkld- 
rung (literally clearing up) for the terms exposition, explica- 
tion, declaration, and definition; and we must not therefore 
Ik- too strict in our demands, when denying to the different 
kinds of a philosophical clearing" up the honourable name 
of definition. What we really insist on is this, that philo- 
sophical definitions are possible only as expositions of 
given concepts, mathematical definitions as constructions 
of concepts, originally framed by ourselves, the former 
therefore analytically (where completeness is never apo- 
dictically certain), the latter synthetically. Mathematical 
definitions make the concept, philosophical definitions ex- 
plain it only. Hence it follows, 

a. That we must not try in philosophy to imitate mathe- 
matics by beginning with definitions, except it be by way 
of experiment. For as they are meant to be an analysis 
of given concepts, these concepts themselves, although as 
yet confused only, must come first, and the incomplete 
exposition must precede the complete one, so that we are 
able from some characteristics, known to us from an, as 
yet, incomplete analysis, to infer many things before we 
come to a complete exposition, that is, the definition of 
the concept. In philosophy, in fact, the defini- [p. 731] 
tion in its complete clearness ought to conclude rather 



Discipline of Pure Reasoii cgy 

than begin our work ; J while in mathematics we really 
have no concept antecedent to the definition by which the 
concept itself is first given, so that in mathematics no 
other beginning is necessary or possible. 

b. Mathematical definitions can never be erroneous, 
because, as the concept is first given by the definition, it 
contains neither more nor less than what the definition 
wishes should be conceived by it. But although there can 
be nothing wrong in it, so far as its contents are concerned, 
mistakes may sometimes, though rarely, occur in the form 
or wording, particularly with regard to perfect precision. 
Thus the common definition of a circle, that it is a curved 
line, every point of which is equally distant from one and 
the same point (namely, the centre), is faulty, [p. 732] 
because the determination of curved is introduced un- 
necessarily. For there must be a particular theorem, 
derived from the definition,, and easily proved, viz. that 
every line, all points of which are equidistant from one 
and the same point, must be curved (no part of it being 
straight). Analytical definitions, however, may be erro- 
neous in many respects, either by introducing characteris- 
tics which do not really exist in the concept, or by lacking 
that completeness which is essential to a definition, because 



1 Philosophy swarms with faulty definitions, particularly such as contain 
some true elements of a definition, but not all. If, therefore, it were impos- 
sible to use a concept until it had been completely defined, philosophy would 
fare very ill. As, however, we may use a definition with perfect safety, so 
far at least as the elements of the analysis will carry us, imperfect definitions 
also, that is, propositions which are not yet properly definitions, but are yet 
true, and, therefore, approximations to a definition, may be used with great 
advantage. In mathematics definitions belong ad esse, in philosophy ad melius 
esse. It is desirable, but it is extremely difficult to construct a proper definition. 
Jurists are without a definition of right to the present day. 



588 Discipline- of Pure- Reason 

we can never be quite certain of the completeness of our 

analysis. It is on these accounts that the method of 
mathematics cannot be imitated in the definitions of phi- 
losophy. 

II. Of Axioms. These, SO tar as they are immediately 
certain, are synthetical principles a pi'iori. One concept 
cannot, however, be connected synthetically and yet im- 
mediately with another, because, it' we wish to go beyond 
a given concept, a third connecting knowledge is required; 
and, as philosophy is the knowledge of reason based on 
concepts, no principle can be found in it deserving the 
name of an axiom. Mathematics, on the other hand, may 
well possess axioms, because here, by means of the con- 
struction of concepts in the intuition of their object, the 
predicates may always be connected a priori and immedi- 
ately ; for instance, that three points always lie in a plane. 
A synthetical principle, on the contrary, made up of con- 
cepts only, can never be immediately certain, [p. 733] 
as, for example, the proposition that everything which 
happens has its cause. Here I require something else, 
namely, the condition of the determination by time in a 
given experience, it being impossible for me to know such 
a principle, directly and immediately, from the concepts. 
Discursive principles are, therefore, something quite dif- 
ferent from intuitive principles or axioms. The former 
always require, in addition, a deduction, not at all required 
for the latter, which, on that very account, are evident, 
while philosophical principles, whatever their certainty 
may be, can never pretend to be so. Hence it is very far 
from true to say that any synthetical proposition of pure 
and transcendental reason is so evident (as people some- 
times emphatically maintain) as the statement that twice 



Discipline of Piwe Reason 589 

two are four. It is true that in the Analytic, when giving 
the table of the principles of the pure understanding, I men- 
tioned also certain axioms of intuition ; but the principle 
there mentioned was itself no axiom, but served only to 
indicate the principle of the possibility of axioms in gen- 
eral, being itself no more than a principle based on con- 
cepts. It was necessary in our transcendental philosophy 
to show the possibility even of mathematics. Philosophy, 
therefore, is without axioms, and can never put forward 
its principles a prioi'i with absolute authority, but must 
first consent to justify its claims by a thorough deduc- 
tion. . [p. 734] 
III. Of Demonstrations. An apodictic proof only, so 
far as it is intuitive, can be called demonstration. Experi- 
ence may teach us what is, but never that it cannot be 
otherwise. Empirical arguments, therefore, cannot pro- 
duce an apodictic proof. From concepts a priori, how- 
ever (in discursive knowledge), it is impossible that intui- 
tive certainty, that is, evidence, should ever arise, however 
apodictically certain the judgment may otherwise seem to 
be. Demonstrations we get in mathematics only, because 
here our knowledge is derived not from concepts, but from 
their construction, that is, from intuition, which can be 
given a priori, in accordance with the concepts. Even 
the proceeding of algebra, with its equations, from which 
by reduction both the correct result and its proof are 
produced, is a construction by characters, though not 
geometrical, in which, by means of signs, the concepts, 
particularly those of the relation of quantities, are repre- 
sented in intuition, and (without any regard to the heuris- 
tic method) all conclusions are secured against errors by 
submitting each of them to intuitive evidence. Philosoph- 



590 Discipline of Pun- Reason 

ical knowledge cannot claim this advantage, for here we 

must always consider the genera] in the abstract (by con- 
cepts), while in mathematics we may consider the gen- 
eral in the concrete, in each single intuition, and yet 
through pure representation ,i priori, where every mistake 

becomes at once manifest. J should prefer, [p. 735] 
therefore, to call the former acroamatic, or audible (discur- 
sive) proofs^ because they can be carried out by words 

only (the object in thought), rather than demonstrations ', 

which, as the very term implies, depend on the intuition 
of the object. 

It follows from all this that it is not in accordance with 
the very nature of philosophy to boast of its dogmatical 
character, particularly in the field of pure reason, and to 
deck itself with tin- titles and ribands of mathematics, an 
order to which it can never belong, though it may well 
hope for co-operation with that s :ience. All those at- 
tempts are vain pretensions which can never be success- 
ful, nay, which can only prove an obstacle in the discovery 
of the illusions of reason, when ignoring its own limits, 
and which must mar our success in calling back, by means 
of a sufficient explanation of our concepts, the conceit of 
speculation to the more modest and thorough work of self- 
knowledge. Reason oucrht not, therefore, in its tran- 
scendental endeavours, to look forward with such confi- 
dence, as if the path which it has traversed must lead 
straight to its goal, nor depend with such assurance on 
its premisses as to consider it unnecessary to look back 
from time to time, to find out whether, in the progress of 
its conclusions, errors may come to light, which were over- 
looked in the principles, and which render it nee- [p. 736] 
essary either to determine those principles more accu- 
rately or to change them altogether. 



Discipline of Pure Reason 591 

I divide all apodictic propositions, whether demonstrable 
or immediately certain, into Dogmata and Mathemata. A 
directly synthetical proposition, based on concepts, is a 
Dogma; a proposition of the same kind, arrived at by 
the construction of concepts, is a MatJiema. Analytical 
judgments teach us really no more of an object than what 
the concept which we have of it contains in itself. They 
cannot enlarge our knowledge beyond the concept, but 
only clear it. They cannot, therefore, be properly called 
dogmas (a word which might perhaps best be translated 
by precepts, Lehrspriiche). According to our ordinary 
mode of speech, we could apply that name to that class 
only of the two above-mentioned classes of synthetical 
propositions a priori which refers to philosophical know- 
ledge, and no one would feel inclined to give the name of 
Dogma to the propositions of arithmetic or geometry. In 
this way the usage of language confirms our explanation 
that those judgments only which are based on conceptions, 
and not those which are arrived at by the construction of 
concepts, can be called dogmatic. 

Now in the whole domain of pure reason, in its purely 
speculative use, there does not exist a single directly 
synthetical judgment based on concepts. We have shown 
that reason, by means of ideas, is incapable of any syn- 
thetical judgments which could claim objective validity, 
while by means of the concepts of our understanding it 
establishes no doubt some perfectly certain prin- [p. 737] 
ciples, but not directly from concepts, but indirectly only, 
by referring such concepts to something purely contingent, 
namely, possible experience. When such experience (any- 
thing as an object of possible experience) is presupposed, 
these principles are, no doubt, apodictically certain, but 



592 • Discipline of Pure Reason 

in themselves (directly) they cannot even be known a priori. 
Thus the proposition that everything which happens has 
its cause, can never be thoroughly understood by means 
of the concepts alone which are contained in it ; hence it 
is no dogma in itself, although, from another point of view, 
that is, in the only field of its possible use, namely, in 
experience, it may be proved apodictically. It should be 
called, therefore, a principle, and not a precept or a dogma 
(though it is necessary that it should itself be proved), 
because it has this peculiarity that it first renders its own 
proof, namely, experience, possible, and has always to be 
presupposed for the sake of experience. 

If, therefore, there are no dogmata whatever in the 
speculative use of pure reason, with regard to their con- 
tents also, all dogmatical methods, whether borrowed from 
mathematics or invented on purpose, are alike inappropri- 
ate. They only serve to hide mistakes and errors, and 
thus deceive philosophy, whose true object is to shed the 
clearest light on every step which reason takes. The 
method may, however, well be systematical ; for our reason 
(subjectively) is itself a system, though in its [p. 738] 
pure use, by means of mere concepts, a system intended 
for investigation only, according to principles of unity, to 
which experience alone can supply the material. We can- 
not, however, dwell here on the method of transcendental 
philosophy, because all we have to do at present is to take 
stock in order to find out whether we are able to build at 
all, and how high the edifice may be which we can erect 
with the materials at our command (the pure concepts 
a priori). 



Discipline of Pure Reason 593 

METHOD OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 

Section II 

The Discipline of Pure Reason in its Polemical Use 

Reason in all her undertakings must submit to criticism, 
and cannot attempt to limit the free exercise of such crit- 
icism without injury to herself, and without exposing 
herself to dangerous suspicion. There is nothing so 
important with reference to its usefulness, nothing so 
sacred, that it could withdraw itself from that searching 
examination which has no respect of persons. The very 
existence of reason depends on that freedom ; for reason 
can claim no dictatorial authority, but its decrees are 
rather like the votes of free citizens, every one of whom 
may freely express, not only his doubts, but even [p. 739] 
his veto. 

But, though reason can never refuse to submit to criti- 
cism, it does not follow that she need always be afraid of 
it, while pure reason in her dogmatical (not mathematical) 
use is not so thoroughly conscious of having herself 
obeyed her own supreme laws as not to appear with a 
certain shyness, nay, without any of her assumed dog- 
matical authority, before the tribunal of a higher judicial 
reason. 

The case is totally different when reason has to deal, 
not with the verdicts of a judge, but with the claims of 
her fellow-citizens, and has to defend itself only against 
these claims. For as these mean to be as dogmatical in 
their negations as reason is in her affirmations, reason 
may justify herself tear avOpwirov, so as to be safe against 

2Q 



594 Discipline of Pure Reason 

all damages, and with a good title to her own property 

that need not fear any foreign claims, although /car 
aXrjdeiav it could not itself be established with sufficient 
evidence. 

By the polemical use of pure reason I mean the defence 
of her own propositions against dogmatical negations. 
Here the question is not, whether her own assertions may 
not themselves be false, but it is only to be shown that no 
one is ever able to prove the opposite- with apodictic cer- 
tainty, nay, even with a higher degree of plausibility. 
For we are not on sufferance in our possession, [p. 740] 
when, though our own title may not be sufficient, it is 
nevertheless quite certain that no one can ever prove its 
insufficiency. 

It is sad, no doubt, and discouraging, that there should 
be an antithetic of pure reason, and that reason, being the 
highest tribunal for all conflicts, should be in conflict with 
herself. We had on a former occasion to treat of such an 
apparent antithetic, but we saw that it arose from a mis- 
understanding, phenomena, according to the common prej- 
udice, being taken for things in themselves, and an 
absolute completeness of their synthesis being demanded 
in one way or other (being equally impossible in either 
way), a demand entirely unreasonable with regard to 
phenomena. There was, therefore, no real contradiction 
in reason herself when making the two propositions, first, 
that the series of phenomena given by themselves has an 
absolutely first beginning ; and, secondly, that the series is 
absolutely and by itself without any beginning ; for both 
propositions are perfectly consistent with each other, 
because phenomena, with regard to their existence as 
phenomena, are by tJiemselves nothing, that is, something 



Discipline of Pnre Reason 595 

self-contradictory, so that their hypothesis must naturally 
lead to contradictory inferences. [p. 741] 

We cannot, however, appeal to a similar misunderstand- 
ing, in order to remove the conflict of reason, when it is 
said, for instance, on one side, theistically, that there is a 
Supreme Being, and on the other, atheistically, that there 
is no Supreme Being ; or if in psychology it is main- 
tained that everything which thinks possesses an abso- 
lute and permanent unity and is different, therefore, from 
all perishable material unity, while others maintain that 
a soul is not an immaterial unity, and not exempt, there- 
fore from perishableness. For here the object of the 
question is free from anything heterogeneous or contradic- 
tory to its own nature, and our understanding has to deal 
with things by themselves only and not with phenomena. 
Here, therefore, we should have a real conflict, if only on 
the negative side pure reason could advance anything like 
the ground of an assertion. We may well admit the criti- 
cism of the arguments advanced by those who dogmati- 
cally assert, without therefore having to surrender these 
assertions, which are supported at least by the interest 
of reason, to which the opposite party cannot appeal. 

I cannot share the opinion so frequently expressed by 
excellent and thoughtful men (for instance Sulzer) who, 
being fully conscious of the weakness of the proofs hitherto 
advanced, indulge in a hope that the future would supply 
us with evident demonstrations of the two cardinal prop- 
ositions of pure reason, namely, that there is a God, and 
that there is a future life. I am certain, on the [p. 742] 
contrary, that this will never be the case, for whence 
should reason take the grounds for such synthetical asser- 
tions, which do not refer to objects of experience and 



Discipline of Pure Reason 

their internal possibility 5 But there is the same apodictic 
certainty that no man will ever arise to assert the contrary 
with the smallest plausibility, mneh loss dogmatically] 
For, as ho could prove it by means of pure reason only, 
he would have to prove that a Supreme Being, and that 
a thinking subject within us, as pure Intelligence, is im- 
possible. Hut whence will he take the knowledge that 
would justify him in thus judging synthetically on thing! 

far beyond all possible- experience? We maw therefore, 
rest SO completely assured that no one will ever really 
prove the opposite, that there is no need to invent any 

scholastic arguments. Wo may safely accept those prop- 
ositions which .i ■ well with the speculative inter- 
ests oi our reason in its empirical use, and are besides the 
only means of reconciling tlu-m with our practical inter* 
ests. As against our opponent, who must not be consid- 
ered here .is .1 critic only, we are always ready with our 
Non liquet. This must inevitably confound our adversary, 
while we need not mind his retort, because we can always 
fall back on the subjective maxim of reason, [p. 743] 
which our adversary cannot, and can thus, protected 
by it, look upon all his vain attacks with calmness and 
indifference. 

Thus we see that there is really no antithetic of pure 
reason, for the only arena for it would be the field of pure 
theology and psychology, and on that field it is not able 
to support a champion in full armour and with weapons 
which we need be afraid of. He can only use ridicule 
and boasting, and these we may laugh at as mere child's 
play. This ought to be a real comfort and inspire reason 
with new courage ; for what else could she depend on, if 
she herself, who is called upon to remove all errors, were 



Discipline of Pure Reason 597 

divided against herself, without any hope of peace and 
quiet possession ? 

Whatever has been ordained by nature is good for some 
purpose or other. Even poisons serve to counteract other 
poisons which are in our own blood, and they must not 
be absent therefore in a complete collection of medicines. 
The objections against the vain persuasions and the con- 
ceit of our own purely speculative reason are inspired 
by the very nature of that reason, and must therefore 
have their own good purpose, which must not be lightly 
cast aside. Why has Providence placed certain things, 
which concern our highest interests, so far be- [p. 744] 
yond our reach that we are only able to apprehend them 
very indistinctly and dubiously, and our enquiring gaze is 
more excited than satisfied by them ? It is very doubtful 
whether it is useful to venture on any bold answers with 
regard to such obscure questions, nay, whether it may not 
be detrimental. But one thing is quite certain, namely, 
that it is useful to grant to reason the fullest freedom, 
both of enquiry and of criticism, so that she may consult 
her own interest without let or hindrance. And this is 
done quite as much by limiting her insight as by enlarg- 
ing it, while nothing but mischief must arise from any for- 
eign interference or any attempt to direct reason, against 
her own. natural inclination, towards objects forced upon 
her from without. 

Allow, therefore, your adversary to speak reason, and 
combat him with weapons of reason only. As to any 
practical interests you need not be afraid, for in purely 
speculative discussions they are not involved at all. What 
comes to light in these discussions is only a certain anti- 
nomy of reason which, as it springs from the very nature 



598 Discipline of Pure Reason 

of reason, must needs be listened to and examined. Rea- 
son is thus improved only by a consideration of both sides 
of her subject. Her judgment is corrected by the very 
limitations imposed upon her. What people may differ 
about is not the matter so much as the tone and manner 
of these discussions. For, though you have to surrender 
the language of knowledge > it is perfectly open [p. 745] 
to you to retain the language of the firmest faith, which 
need not fear the severest tost of reason. 

If we could ask that dispassionate philosopher, David 
Hume, who seemed made to maintain the most perfect 
equilibrium of judgment, what induced him to undermine 
by carefully elaborated arguments the persuasion, so use- 
ful and so full of comfort for mankind, as that reason is 
sufficient to assert and to form a definite concept of a 
Supreme Being, he would answer, Nothing but a wish to 
advance reason in self-knowledge, and at the same time 
a certain feeling of indignation at the violence which 
people wish to inflict on reason by boasting of her powers, 
and yet at the same time preventing her from openly con- 
fessing her weakness of which she has become conscious 
by her own self-examination. If, on the contrary, you 
were to ask Priestley, who was guided by the principles 
of the empirical use of reason only and opposed to all 
transcendental speculation, what could have induced him 
to pull down two such pillars of religion as the freedom 
and immortality of our soul (for the hope of a future life 
is with him an expectation only of the miracle of a resus- 
citation), he, who was himself so pious and zealous a 
teacher of religion, could answer nothing but that he was 
concerned for reason, which must suffer if certain subjects 
are withdrawn from the laws of material nature, the only 



Discipline of Pure Reason 599 

laws which we can accurately know and fix. It [p. 746] 
would be most unjust to decry the latter, who was able to 
combine his paradoxical assertions with the interests of 
religion, and to inflict pain on a well-intentioned man, 
simply because he could not find his way, the moment 
he strayed away from the field of natural science. And 
the same favour must be extended to the equally well- 
intentioned, and in his moral character quite blameless, 
Hume, who could not and would not leave his abstract 
speculations, because he was rightly convinced that their 
object lies entirely outside the limits of natural science, 
and within the sphere of pure ideas. 

What then is to be done, especially with regard to the 
danger which is believed to threaten the commonwealth 
from such speculations ? Nothing is more natural, nothing 
more fair than the decision which you have to come to. 
Let these people go ! If they show talent, if they produce 
new and profound investigations, in one word, if they show 
reason, reason can only gain. If you have recourse to any- 
thing else but untrammelled reason, if you raise the cry 
of high treason, and call together the ignorant mob as 
it were to extinguish a conflagration — you simply render 
yourself ridiculous. For here the question is not what 
may be useful or dangerous to the commonwealth, but 
merely how far reason may advance in her speculations, 
which are independent of all practical interests ; [p. 747] 
in fact, whether these speculations are to count for anything, 
or are to be surrendered entirely for practical considera- 
tions. Instead of rushing in, sword in hand, it is far wiser 
to watch the struggle from the safe scat of the critic. That 
struggle is very hard for the combatants themselves, while 
to you it need not be anything but entertaining, and, as 



600 Discipline of Pure Reason 

the issue is sure to be without bloodshed, it may become 
highly improving to your own intellect. For it is ex- 
tremely absurd to expect to be enlightened by reason, and 
yet to prescribe to her beforehand on which side she must 
incline. Besides, reason is naturally so subdued and 
checked by reason, that you need not send out patrols in 
order to bring the civil law to bear on that party whose 
victory you fear. In this dialectical war no victory is 
gained that need disturb your peace of mind. 

Reason really stands in need of such dialectical strife, 
and it is much to be wished that it had taken place sooner, 
and with the unlimited sanction of the public, for, in that 
case, criticism would sooner have reached complete ma- 
turity, and disputes would have come to an end by each 
part)- becoming aware of the illusions and prejudices which 
caused their differences. 

There is in human nature a certain disingenuousness 

which, however, like everything that springs [p. 748] 

from nature, must contain a useful germ, namely, a ten- 
» 
dency to conceal one's own true sentiments, and to give 

expression to adopted opinions which are supposed to be 
good and creditable. There is no doubt that this tendency 
to conceal oneself and to assume a favourable appearance 
has helped towards the progress of civilisation, nay, to a 
certain extent, of morality, because others, who could not 
see through the varnish of respectability, honesty, and 
correctness, were led to improve themselves by seeing 
everywhere these examples of goodness which they be- 
lieved to be genuine. This tendency, however, to show 
oneself better than one really is, and to utter sentiments 
which one does not really share, can only serve pro- 
visionally to rescue men from a rude state, and to teach 



Discipline of Pure Reason 60 1 

them to assume at least the appearance of what they know 
to be good. Afterwards, when genuine principles have 
once been developed and become part of our nature, that 
disingenuousness must be gradually conquered, because it 
will otherwise deprave the heart and not allow the good 
seeds of honest conviction to grow up among the tares of 
fair appearances. 

I am sorry to observe the same disingenuousness, con- 
cealment, and hypocrisy even in the utterances of specu- 
lative thought, though there are here fewer hindrances in 
uttering our convictions openly and freely as we ought, 
and no advantage whatever in our not doing [p. 749] 
so. For what can be more mischievous to the advance- 
ment of knowledge than to communicate even our thoughts 
in a falsified form, to conceal doubts which we feel in our 
own assertions, and to impart an appearance of conclusive- 
ness to arguments which we know ourselves to be incon- 
clusive ? So long as those tricks arise from personal 
vanity only (which is commonly the case with speculative 
arguments, as touching no particular interests, nor easily 
capable of apodictic certainty) they are mostly counter- 
acted by the vanity of others, with the full approval of the 
public at large, and thus the result is generally the same 
as what would or might have been obtained sooner by 
means of pure ingenuousness and honesty. But where 
the public has once persuaded itself that certain subtle 
speculators aim at nothing less than to shake the very 
foundations of the common welfare of the people, it is 
supposed to be not only prudent, but even advisable and 
honourable, to come to the succour of what is called the 
good cause, by sophistries, rather than to allow to our 
supposed antagonists the satisfaction of having lowered 



6o2 Discipline of Pure Reason 

our tone to that of a purely practical conviction, and hav- 
ing forced us to confess the absence of all speculative 
and apodictic certainty. I cannot believe this, nor can I 
admit that the intention of serving a good cause can ever 
be combined with trickery, misrepresentation, and fraud. 
That in weighing the arguments of a speculative discus- 
sion we ought to be honest, seems the least that [p. 750] 
can be demanded ; and if we could at least depend on 
this with perfect certainty, the conflict of speculative 
reason with regard to the important questions of God, the 
immortality of the soul, and freedom, would long ago have 
been decided, or would soon be brought to a conclusion. 
Thus it often happens that the purity of motives and senti- 
ments stands in an inverse ratio to the goodness of the 
cause, and that its supposed assailants are more honest 
and more straightforward than its defenders. 

Supposing that I am addressing readers who never wish 
to see a just cause defended by unjust means, I may say 
that, according to our principles of criticism, and looking 
not at what commonly happens, but at what in all common 
fairness ought to happen, there ought to be no polemical 
use of reason at all. For how can two persons dispute on 
a subject the reality of which neither of them can present 
either in real, or even in possible experience, while they 
brood on the mere idea of it with the sole intention of 
eliciting something more than the idea, namely, the reality 
of the object itself ? How can they ever arrive at the end 
of their dispute, as neither of them can make his view 
comprehensible and certain, or do more than attack and 
refute the view of his opponent ? For this is the fate of 
all assertions of pure reason. They go beyond the condi- 
tions of all possible experience, where no proof [p. 751] 



Discipline of Pure Reason 603 

of truth is to be found anywhere, but they have to follow, 
nevertheless, the laws of the understanding, which are 
intended for empirical use only, but without which no step 
can be made in synthetical thought. Thus it happens 
that each side lays open its own weaknesses, and each can 
avail itself of the weaknesses of the other. 

The critique of pure reason may really be looked upon 
as the true tribunal for all disputes of reason ; for it is not 
concerned in these disputes which refer to objects imme- 
diately, but is intended to fix and to determine the rights 
of reason in general, according to the principles of its 
original institution. 

Without such a critique, reason may be said to be in a 
state of nature, and unable to establish and defend its as- 
sertions and claims except by war. The critique of pure 
reason, on the contrary, which bases all its decisions on 
the indisputable principles of its own original institution, 
secures to us the peace of a legal status, in which disputes 
are not to be carried on except in the proper form of a law- 
suit In the former state such disputes generally end in 
both parties claiming victory, which is followed by an un- 
certain peace, maintained chiefly by the civil power, while 
in the latter state a sentence \s pronounced which, [p. 752] 
as it goes to the very root of the dispute, must secure an 
eternal peace. These never-ceasing disputes of a purely 
dogmatical reason compel people at last to seek for rest and 
peace in some criticism of reason itself, and in some sort 
of legislation founded upon such criticism. Thus Hobbes 
maintains that the state of nature is a state of injustice 
and violence, and that we must needs leave it and submit 
ourselves to the constraint of law, which alone limits our 
freedom in such a way that it may consist with the free- 
dom of others and with the common good. 



604 Discipline of Pure Reason 

It is part of that freedom that we should be allowed 
openly to state our thoughts and our doubts which we 
cannot solve ourselves, without running the risk of being 
decried on that account as turbulent and dangerous citizens. 
This follows from the inherent rights of reason, which 
recognises no other judge but universal human reason 
itself. Here everybody has a vote; and, as all improve- 
ments of which our state is capable must spring from 
thence, such rights are sacred and must never be minished. 
Nay, it would really be foolish to proclaim certain bold 
assertions, or reckless attacks upon assertions which en- 
joy the approval of the largest and best portion of the 
commonwealth, as dangerous; for that would be to impart 
to them an importance which they do not pos- [p. 753] 
sess. Whenever I hear that some uncommon genius has 
demonstrated away the freedom of the human will, the 
hope of a future life, or the existence of God, I am always 
desirous to read his book, for I expect that his talent will 
help me to improve my own insight into these problems. 
Of one thing I feel quite certain, even without having 
seen his book, that he has not disproved any single one of 
these doctrines; not because I imagine that I am myself 
in possession of irrefragable proofs of them, but because 
the transcendental critique, by revealing to me the whole 
apparatus of our pure reason, has completely convinced 
me that, as reason is insufficient to establish affirmative 
propositions in this sphere of thought, it is equally, nay, 
even more powerless to establish the negative on any of 
these points. For where is this so-called free-thinker to 
take the knowledge that, for instance, there exists no 
Supreme Being ? This proposition lies outside the field 
of possible experience and, therefore, outside the limits of 



Discipline of Pure Reason 605 

all human cognition. The dogmatical defender of the 
good cause I should not read at all, because I know before- 
hand that he will attack the sophistries of the other 
party simply in order to recommend his own. Besides, a 
mere defence of the common opinion does not supply so 
much material for new remarks as a strange and ingeniously 
contrived theory. The opponent of religion, himself 
dogmatical in his own way, would give me a [p. 754] 
valuable opportunity for amending here and there the 
principles of my own critique of pure reason, while I 
should not be at all afraid of any danger arising from his 
theories. 

But it may be argued that the youth at least, entrusted 
to our academical teaching, should be warned against such 
writings, and kept away from a too early knowledge of 
such dangerous propositions, before their faculty of judg- 
ment, or we should rather say, before the doctrines which 
we wish to inculcate on them, have taken root, and are 
able to withstand all persuasion and pressure, from what- 
ever quarter it may proceed. 

Yes, if the cause of pure reason is always to be pleaded 
dogmatically, and if opponents are to be disposed of 
polemically, i.e. simply by taking up arms against them 
and attacking them by means of proofs of opposite opin- 
ions, nothing might seem for the moment more advisable, 
but nothing would prove in the long run more vain and 
inefficient than to keep the reason of youth in temporary 
tutelage, and to guard it against temptation for a time at 
least. If, however, curiosity or the fashion of the age 
should afterwards make them acquainted with such writ- 
ings, will their youthful persuasion then hold good ? He 
who is furnished with dogmatical weapons only in order to 



6of> Discipline of Pure Reason 

resist the attacks oi his opponent, and is not able to ana- 
lyse that hidden dialectic which is concealed in his own 
breast quite as much as in that of his Opponent, sees 
sophistries which at all events have the charm of [p. 755] 
novelty, opposed to other sophistries which possess that 
charm no longer, ami excite the suspicion of having im- 
posed on the natural credulity of youth. He sees no 
better way of showing that he is no longer a child than by 
ignoring all well-meant warnings, and, accustomed as he is 
to dogmatism, he swallows the poison which destroys his 
principles by a new dogmatism. 

The very opposite of this is the right course for aca- 
demical instruction, provided always that it is founded 
on a thorough training in the principles of the criti- 
cism of pure reason. For, in order to practically apply 
these principles as soon as possible, and to show their 
sufficiency even when faced by the strongest dialectical 
illusion, it is absolutely necessary to allow the attacks, 
which seem so formidable to the dogmatist, to be directed 
against the young mind whose reason, though weak as 
yet, has been enlightened by criticism, so as to let him 
test by its principles the groundless assertions of his 
opponents one after the other. He cannot find it very 
difficult to dissolve them all into mere vapour, and thus 
alone does he early begin to feel his own power and 
is able to secure himself against all dangerous illusions 
which in the end lose all their fascination on him. It is 
true, the same blows which destroy the strong- [p. 756] 
hold of his opponent must prove fatal also to his own 
speculative structures, if he should wish to erect such. 
But this need not disturb him, because he does not wish 
to shelter himself beneath them, but looks out for the 



Discipline of Pure Reason 607 

fair field of practical philosophy, where he may hope 
to find firmer ground for erecting his own rational and 
beneficial system. 

There is, therefore, no room for real polemic in the 
sphere of pure reason. Both parties beat the air and 
fight with their own shadows, because they go beyond 
the limits of nature, where there is nothing that they 
could lay hold of with their dogmatical grasp. They 
may fight to their hearts' content, the shadows which 
they are cleaving grow together again in one moment, 
like the heroes in Valhalla, in order to disport themselves 
once more in these bloodless contests. 

Nor can we admit a sceptical use of pure reason, which 
might be called the principle of neutrality in all its dis- 
putes. Surely, to stir up reason against itself, to supply 
it with weapons on both sides, and then to look on 
quietly and scoffingly while the fierce battle is 'raging, 
does not look well from a dogmatical point of view, 
but has the appearance of a mischievous and malevolent 
disposition. If, however, we consider the in- [p. 757] 
vincible obstinacy and the boasting of the dogmatical 
sophists, who are deaf to all the warnings of criticism, 
there really seems nothing left but to meet the boasting 
on one side by an equally justified boasting on the other, 
in order at least to startle reason by a display of opposi- 
tion, and thus to shake her confidence and make her 
willing to listen to the voice of criticism. But to stop 
at this point, and to look upon the conviction and con- 
fession of ignorance, not only as a remedy against dog- 
matical conceit, but as the best means of settling the 
conflict of reason with herself, is a vain attempt that 
will never give rest and peace to reason. The utmost 



608 Discipline of Pure Reason 

it can do is to rouse reason from her sweet dogmatical 
dreams, and to induce her to examine more carefully her 
own position. As, however, the sceptical manner of avoid- 
ing a troublesome business seems to be the shortest way 
out of all difficulties, and promises to lead to a permanent 
peace in philosophy, or is chosen at least as the highroad 
by all who, under the pretence of a scornful dislike of all 
investigations of this kind, try to give themselves the air 
of philosophers, it seems necessary to exhibit this mode of 
thought in its true light. 

The Impossibility of a Sceptical Satisfaction of [p. 758] 
Pure Reason in Conflict with itself 

The consciousness of my ignorance (unless we recog- 
nise at the same time its necessity) ought, instead of 
forming the end of my investigations, to serve, on the 
contrary, as their strongest impulse. All ignorance is 
either an ignorance of things, or an ignorance of the limits 
of our cognition. If ignorance is accidental, it should 
incite us, in the former case, to investigate things dog- 
matically, in the latter to investigate the limits of possible 
knowledge critically. That my ignorance is absolutely 
necessary and that I am absolved from the duty of all 
further investigation, can never be established empirically 
by mere observation, but critically only, by a thorough 
examination of the first sources of our knowledge. The 
determination of the true limits of our reason, therefore, 
can be made on a priori grounds only, while its limitation, 
which consists in a general recognition of our never en- 
tirely removable ignorance, may be realised a posteriori 
also, by seeing how much remains to be known in spite of 



Discipline of Pure Rcaso?i 609 

all that can be known. The former knowledge of our igno- 
rance, possible only by criticism of reason, is truly scien- 
tific, the latter is merely matter of experience, [p. 759] 
where it is never possible to say how far the inferences 
drawn from it may reach. If I regard the earth, accord- 
ing to the evidence of my senses, as a flat surface, I can- 
not tell how far it may extend. But what experience 
teaches me is, that wheresoever I go, I always see before 
me a space in which I can proceed further. Thus I am 
conscious of the limits of my actual knowledge of the 
earth at any given moment, but not of the limits of all 
possible geography. But if I have got so far as to know 
that the earth is a sphere and its surface spherical, I am 
able from any small portion of it, for instance, from a 
degree, to know definitely and according to principles a 
priori, the diameter, and through it, the complete periph- 
ery of the earth ; and, though I am ignorant with regard 
to the objects which are contained in that surface, I am 
not so with regard to its extent, its magnitude, and its 
limits. 

In a similar manner the whole of the objects of our 
knowledge appears to us like a level surface, with its 
apparent horizon which encircles its whole extent, and 
was called by us the idea of unconditioned totality. To 
reach this limit empirically is impossible, and all attempts 
have proved vain to determine it a priori according to a 
certain principle. Nevertheless, all questions of pure 
reason refer to what lies outside of that horizon, or, it 
may be, on its boundary line. [p. 7^°] 

The celebrated David Hume was one of those geogra- 
phers of human reason who supposed that all those 
questions were sufficiently disposed of by being relegated 



6io Discipline of Pure Reason 

outside that horizon, which, however, he was not able 
to determine. He was chiefly occupied with the princi- 
ple of causality, and remarked quite rightly, that the 
truth of this principle (and even the objective validity of 
the concept of an efficient cause in general) was based 
on no knowledge, i.e. on no cognition a priori, and that 
its authority rested by no means on the necessity of such 
a law,, but merely on its general usefulness in experience, 
and on a kind of subjective necessity arising from thence, 
which he called habit From tin 1 inability of reason to 
employ this principle beyond the limits of experience he 
inferred the nullity of all the pretensions of reason in her 
attempts to pass beyond what is empirical. 

This procedure of subjecting the facts of reason to 
examination, and, if necessary, to blame, may be termed 
the censorship of reason. There can be no doubt that 
such a censorship must inevitably lead to doubts [p. 761] 
against all the transcendental employment of such princi- 
ples. But this is only the second and by no means the last 
step in our enquiry. The first step in matters of pure reason, 
which marks its infancy, is dogmatism. The second, which 
we have just described, is scepticism, and marks the stage 
of caution on the part of reason, when rendered wiser by 
experience. But a third step is necessary, that of the 
maturity and manhood of judgment, based on firm and 
universally applicable maxims, when not the facts of 
reason, but reason itself in its whole power and fitness 
for pure knowledge a priori comes to be examined. This 
is not the censura merely, but the true criticism of reason, 
by which not the barrier only, but the fixed frontiers of 
reason, not ignorance only on this or that point, but 
ignorance with reference to all possible questions of 



Discipline of Pure Reason 6 1 1 

a certain kind, must be proved from principles, instead of 
being merely guessed at. Thus scepticism is a resting- 
place of reason, where it may reflect for a time on its 
dogmatical wanderings and gain a survey of the region 
where it happens to be, in order to choose its way with 
greater certainty for the future : but it can never be its 
permanent dwelling-place. That can only be found in 
perfect certainty, whether of our knowledge of the objects 
themselves or of the limits within which all our knowledge 
of objects is enclosed. [p. 762] 

Our reason is not to be considered as an indefinitely 
extended plain, the limits of which are known in a general 
way only, but ought rather to be compared to a sphere 
the radius of which may be determined from the curva- 
ture of the arc of its surface (corresponding to the nature 
of synthetical propositions a priori), which enables us 
likewise to fix the extent and periphery of it with -perfect 
certainty. Outside that sphere (the field of experience) 
nothing can become an object to our reason, nay, ques- 
tions even on such imaginary objects relate to the sub- 
jective principles only for a complete determination of 
all the relations which may exist between the concepts 
of the understanding within that sphere. 

It is a fact that we are in possession of different 
kinds of synthetical knowledge a priori, as shown by 
the principles of the understanding which anticipate 
experience. If anybody finds it quite impossible to under- 
stand the possibility of such principles, he may at first 
have some doubts as to whether they really dwell within 
us a priori ; but he cannot thus, by the mere powers 
of the understanding, prove their impossibility, and 
declare all the steps which reason takes under their 



612 cipline of Pair Reason 

guidance as null and void. All he can say is that, if 
could understand their origin and genuineness, we 

should be able to determine the extent and limits of 
our reason, and that, until that is done, all the [p. 763] 
assertions of reason are made at random. And in this 
way a compL ticism with regard to all dogmatical 

philosophy, which is not guided by a criticism of reason, 
is well grounded, though we could not therefore deny to 
reason such further advance, after the way has once been 
prepared and secured on firmer ground. For all these 
concepts, nay. all the questions which pure reason places 
before us, have their origin, not in experience, but in 
■n itself, and must therefore he capable of being 
solved and tested as to their validity or invalidity. Nor 
are we justified, while pretending that the solution of these 
problems is really to be found in the nature of things, 
to decline their consideration and further investigation, 
under the pretext of our weakness, for reason alone 
begets all these ideas by itself, and is bound therefore to 
give an account of their validity or their dialectical vanity. 
All sceptical polemic should properly be directed against 
the dogmatist only who, without any misgivings about 
his own fundamental objective principles, that is, without 
criticism, continues his course with undisturbed gravity, 
and should be intended only to unsettle his brief and to 
bring him thus to a proper self-knowledge. With regard 
to what we know or what we cannot know, that polemic is 
of no consequence whatever. All the unsuccessful dogmat- 
ical attempts of reason are facta, and it is always [p. 764] 
useful to submit them to the censura of the sceptic. But 
this can decide nothing as to the expectations of reason in 
her hopes and claims of a better success in future attempts ; 



Discipline of Pare Reason 6 1 3 

and no mere censura can put an end to the disputes 
regarding the rights of human reason. 

Hume is, perhaps, the most ingenious of all sceptics, 
and without doubt the most important with regard to 
the influence which the sceptical method may exercise 
in awakening reason to a thorough examination of its 
rights. It will therefore be worth our while to make 
clear to ourselves the course of his reasoning and the 
errors of an intelligent and estimable man, who at the 
outset of his enquiries was certainly on the right track of 
truth. 

Hume was probably aware, though he never made it 
quite clear to himself, that in judgments of a certain kind 
we pass beyond our concept of the object. I have called 
this class of judgments synthetical. There is no difficulty 
as to how I may, by means of experience, pass beyond the 
concept which I have hitherto had. Experience is itself 
such a synthesis of perceptions through which a concept, 
which I have by means of one perception, is increased by 
means of other perceptions. But we imagine that we are 
able also a priori to pass beyond our concept [p. 765] 
and thus to enlarge our knowledge. This we attempt to do 
either by the pure understanding, in relation to that which 
can at least be an object of experience, or even by means 
of pure reason, in relation to such qualities of things, or 
even the existence of such things, as can never occur in 
experience. Hume in his scepticism did not distinguish 
between these two kinds of judgments as he ought to have 
done, but regarded this augmentation of concepts by 
themselves, and, so to say, the spontaneous generation of 
our understanding (and of our reason), without being im- 
pregnated by experience, as perfectly impossible. Con- 



6 14 Discipline of Pure Reason 

sidcring all principles a priori as imaginary, be arrived at 
the conclusion that they were nothing but a habit arising 
from experience and its laws ; that they were therefore 
merely empirical, that is, in themselves, contingent rules 
to which we wrongly ascribe necessity and universality. 
In order to establish this strange proposition, he appealed 
to the generally admitted principle of the relation between 
cause and effect. For as no faculty of the understanding 
could lead us from the concept of a thing to the existence 
of something else that should follow from it universally 
and necessarily, he thought himself justified in concluding 
that, without experience, we have nothing that could 
augment our concept and give us a right to form a judg- 
ment that extends itself a priori. That the light of the 
sun which shines on the wax should melt the wax and at 
the same time harden the clay, no understand- [p. 766'] 
ing, he maintained, could guess from the concepts which 
we had before of these things, much less infer, according 
to a law, experience only being able to teach us such a law. 
We have seen, on the contrary, in the transcendental logic 
that, though we can never pass immediately beyond the 
content of a concept that is given us, we are nevertheless 
able, entirely a priori, but yet in reference to something 
else, namely, possible experience, to know the law of its 
connection with other things. If, therefore, wax, which 
was formerly hard, melts, I can know a priori that some- 
thing else must have preceded (for instance the heat of 
the sun) upon which this melting has followed according 
to a permanent law, although without experience I could 
never know a priori definitely either from the effect the 
cause, or from the cause the effect. Hume was therefore 
wrong in inferring from the mere contingency of our 



Discipline of Pure Reason 615 

being determined according to the law of causality, the 
contingency of that law itself, and he mistook our passing 
beyond the concept of a thing to some possible experience 
(which is entirely a priori and constitutes the objective 
reality of it) for the synthesis of the objects of real expe- 
rience which, no doubt, is always empirical. He thus 
changed a principle of affinity which resides in the under- 
standing and predicates necessary connection, into a rule 
of association residing in the imitative faculty of imagina- 
tion, which can only represent contingent, but [p. 76^ 
never objective connections. 

The sceptical errors of that otherwise singularly acute 
thinker arose chiefly from a defect, which he shared, how- 
ever, in common with all dogmatists, namely, of not having 
surveyed systematically all kinds of synthesis a priori of 
the understanding. For in doing this he would, without 
mentioning others, have discovered, for instance, th'e prin- 
ciple of permanency as one which, like causality, anticipates 
experience. He would thus have been able also to fix 
definite limits to the understanding in its attempts at 
expansion a priori and to pure reason. He only narrows 
the sphere of our understanding, without definitely limit- 
ing it, and produces a general mistrust, but no definite 
knowledge of that ignorance which to us is inevitable. 
He only subjects certain principles of the understanding 
to his censura, but does not place the understanding, with 
reference to all its faculties, on the balance of criticism. 
He is not satisfied with denying to the understanding 
what in reality it does not possess, but goes on to deny to 
it all power of expanding a priori, though he has never 
really tested all its powers. For this reason, what always 
defeats scepticism has happened to Hume also, namely, 



616 Discipline of Pure Reason 

that he himself becomes subject to scepticism, because his 
objections rest on facts only which are contingent, and not 
on principles which alone can force a surrender of the 
right of dogmatical assertion. [p. 768] 

As, besides this, he does not sufficiently distinguish 
between the well-grounded claims of the understanding 
and the dialectical pretensions of reason, against which, 
however, his attacks are chiefly directed, it so happens 
that reason, the peculiar tendency of which has not in the 
least been destroyed, but only checked, does not at all 
consider itself shut out from its attempts at expansion, 
and can never be entirely turned away from them, al- 
though it may be punished now and then. Mere attacks 
only provoke counter attacks, and make us more obstinate 
in enforcing our own views. But a complete survey of all 
that is really our own, and the conviction of a certain 
though a small possession, make us perceive the vanity of 
higher claims, and induce us, after surrendering all dis- 
putes, to live contentedly and peacefully within our own 
limited, but undisputed domain. 

These sceptical attacks are not only dangerous, but 
even destructive to the uncritical dogmatist who has not 
measured the sphere of his understanding, and has not, 
therefore, determined, according to principles, the limits 
of his own possible knowledge, and does not know before- 
hand how much he is really able to achieve, but thinks 
that he is able to find all this out by a purely tentative 
method. For if he has been found out in one single 
assertion of his, which he cannot justify, or the fallacy 
of which he cannot evolve according to prin- [p. 769] 
ciples, suspicion falls on all his assertions, however plausi- 
ble they may appear. 



Discipline of Pure Reason 617 

And thus the sceptic is the true schoolmaster to lead 
the dogmatic speculator towards a sound criticism of the 
understanding and of reason. When he has once been 
brought there, he need fear no further attacks, for he 
has learnt to distinguish his own possession from that 
which lies completely beyond it, and on which he can 
lay no claim, nor become involved in any disputes regard- 
ing it. Thus the sceptical method, though it cannot in 
itself satisfy with regard to the problems of reason, is 
nevertheless an excellent preparation in order to awaken 
its circumspection, and to indicate the true means whereby 
the legitimate possessions of reason may be secured against 
all attacks. 



DISCIPLINE OF PURE REASON 

Section III 
The Discipline of Pure Reason with Regard to Hypotheses 

As then the criticism of our reason has at last taught 
us so much at least, that with its pure and speculative 
use we can arrive at no knowledge at all, would not this 
seem to open a wide field for hypotheses, as, where we 
cannot assert with certainty, we are at all events at 
liberty to form guesses and opinions ? 

If the faculty of imagination is not simply to [p. 770] 
indulge in dreams, but to invent and compose under the 
strict surveillance of reason, it is necessary that there 
should always be something perfectly certain, and not 
only invented or resting on opinion, and that is the possi- 
bility of the object itself. If that is once given, it is 



6i8 Discipline of Pure Reason 

then allowable, so far as Its reality is concerned, to have 
recourse to opinion, which opinion, however, if it is not to 
be utterly groundless, must be brought in connection with 
what is really given and therefore certain, as its ground 
of explanation. In that case, and in that case only, can 
we speak of an hypothesis. 

As we cannot form the least conception of the possi- 
bility of a dynamical connection a priori, and as the 
categories of the pure understanding are not intended 
to invent any such connection, but only, when it is given 
in experience, to understand it, we cannot by means of 
these categories invent one single object as endowed 
with a new quality not found in experience, or base any 
permissible hypothesis on such a quality ; otherwise we 
should be supplying our reason with empty chimeras, and 
not with concepts of things. Thus it is not permissible 
to invent any new and original powers, as, for instance, 
an understanding capable of perceiving objects without 
the aid of the senses ; or a force of attraction without 
any contact ; a new kind of substances that should exist, 
for instance, in space, without being impenetrable, and 
consequently, also, any connection of substances, differ- 
ent from that which is supplied by experience ; [p. 771] 
no presence, except in space, no duration, except in time. 
In one word, our reason can only use the conditions of 
possible experience as the conditions of the possibility 
of things ; it cannot invent them independently, because 
such concepts, although not self-contradictory, would 
always be without an object. 

The concepts of reason, as was said before, are mere 
ideas, and it is true that they have no object correspond- 
ing to them in experience ; but they do not, for all that, 



Discipline of Pure Reason 619 

refer to purely imaginary objects, which are supposed to 
be possible. They are purely problematical, in order 
to supply (as heuristic fictions) regulative principles for 
the systematical employment of the understanding in the 
sphere of experience. If they are not that, they would 
become mere fictions the possibility of which is quite 
indemonstrable, and which, therefore, can never be em- 
ployed as hypotheses for the explanation of real phe- 
nomena. It is quite permissible to represent the soul 
to ourselves as simple, in order, according to this idea, 
to use the complete and necessary unity of all the facul- 
ties of the soul, although we cannot understand it in 
concreto, as the principle of all our enquiries into its 
internal phenomena. But to assume the soul as a simple 
substance (which is a transcendent concept) would be 
a proposition, not only indemonstrable (this is the case 
with several physical hypotheses), but purely [p. 772] 
arbitrary and rash : because the simple can never occur 
in any experience, and if by substance we understand 
the permanent object of sensuous intuition, the very 
possibility of a simple phenomenon is perfectly incon- 
ceivable. Reason has no right whatever to assume, as 
an opinion, purely intelligible beings, or purely intelligible 
qualities of the objects of the senses ; although, on the 
other side, as we have no concepts whatever, either of 
their possibility or impossibility, we cannot claim any 
truer insight enabling us to deny dogmatically their pos- 
sibility. 

In order to explain given phenomena, no other things or 
reasons can be adduced but those which, according to the 
already known laws of phenomena, have been put in con- 
nection with them. A transcendental hypothesis, adduc- 



620 Discipline of Pure Reason 

ing a mere idea of reason for the explanation of natural 
things, would therefore be no explanation at all, because 
it would really be an attempt at explaining what, accord- 
ing to known empirical principles, we do not understand 
sufficiently by something which we do not understand 
at all. Nor would the principle of such an hypothesis 
serve to help the understanding with regard to its objects, 
but only to satisfy our reason. Order and design in 
nature must themselves be explained on natural grounds 
and according to natural laws ; and for this [p. 773] 
purpose even the wildest hypotheses, if only they are 
physical, are more tolerable than a hyperphysical one, 
— that is, the appeal to the Divine Author, who is 
called in for that very purpose. This would be a prin- 
ciple of ratio ignava, to pass by all causes the objective 
reality of which, in their possibility at least, may be 
known by continued experience, in order to rest on a 
mere idea, which no doubt is very agreeable to our 
reason. With regard to the absolute totality of the 
ground of explanation in the series of causes, there can 
be no difficulty, considering that all mundane objects 
are nothing but phenomena, in which we can never hope 
to find absolute completeness in the synthesis of the 
series of conditions. 

It is impossible to allow transcendental hypotheses in 
the speculative use of reason, or the use of hyperphysical 
instead of physical explanations ; partly, because reason 
is not in the least advanced in that way, but, on the con- 
trary, cut off from its own proper employment, partly 
because such a licence would in the end deprive reason 
of all the fruits that spring from the cultivation of its own 
proper soil, namely, experience. It is true, no doubt, that 



Discipline of Pure Reason 621 

whenever the explanation of nature seems difficult to us, 
we should thus always have a transcendent explanation 
ready to hand, which relieves us of all investigation ; but 
in that case we are led in the end, not to an [p. 774] 
understanding, but to a complete incomprehensibility of 
the principle which, from the very beginning, was so 
designed that it must contain the concept of something 
which is the absolutely First. 

What is, secondly, required in order to render an hy- 
pothesis acceptable, is its adequacy for determining a 
priori, by means of it, all the consequences that are given. 
If, for that purpose, we have to call in the aid of supple- 
mentary hypotheses, they rouse the suspicion of a mere 
fiction, because each of them requires for itself the same 
justification as the fundamental idea, and cannot serve 
therefore as a sufficient witness. No doubt, if we once 
admit an absolutely perfect cause, there is no difficulty in 
accounting for all the order, magnitude, and design which 
are seen in the world. But if we consider what seem to 
us at least deviations and evils in nature, new hypotheses 
will be required in order to save the first hypothesis from 
the objections which it has to encounter. In the same 
manner, whenever the simple independence of the human 
soul, which has been admitted in order to account for all 
its phenomena, is called into question on account of the 
difficulties arising from phenomena similar to the changes 
of matter (growth and decay), new hypotheses have to be 
called in, which may seem plausible, but possess no au- 
thority, except what they derive from the opinion [p. 775] 
which was to yield the chief explanation, and which they 
themselves were called upon to defend. 

If the two hypotheses which we have just mentioned 



622 Discipline of Pure Reason 

as examples of the assertions of reason (the incorporeal 
unity of the soul, and the existence of a Supreme Being) 
are to be accepted, not as hypotheses, but as dogmas 

proved a priori, we have nothing to say to them. Great 
care, however, should be taken in that case that they 
should be proved with the apodictic certainty of a demon- 
stration. It would be as absurd to try to make the reality 
of such ideas plausible only, as to try to make a geomet- 
rical proposition plausible. Reason, independent of all 
experience, knows everything either a priori, and as neces- 
sary or not at all. Its judgment, therefore, is never 
opinion, but either an abstaining from all judgments, or 
apodictic certainty. Opinions and guesses as to what 
belongs to things can be admitted in explanation only of 
what is really given, or as resulting, according to empirical 
laws, from something that is really given. They belong, 
therefore, to the series of the objects of experience only. 
Outside that field to opine is the same as to play with 
thoughts, unless we suppose that even a doubtful and un- 
certain way of judging might lead us perhaps on to the 
truth. 

But although, when dealing with the purely [p. 776] 
speculative questions of pure reason, no hypotheses are 
admissible in order to found on them any propositions, 
they are perfectly admissible in order, if possible, to defend 
them ; that is to say, they may be used for polemical, but 
not for dogmatical purposes. Nor do I understand by 
defending the strengthening of the proofs in support of 
our assertions, but only the refutation of the dialectical 
arguments of the opponent which are intended to invali- 
date our assertions. All synthetical propositions of pure 
reason have this peculiarity that, although the philosopher 



Discipline of Pure Reason 623 

who maintains the reality of certain ideas never possesses 
sufficient knowledge in order to render his own proposi- 
tions certain, his opponent is equally unable to prove the 
opposite. It is true, no doubt, that this equality of fort- 
une, which is peculiar to human reason, favours neither 
of the two parties with regard to their speculative know- 
ledge, and hence the never-ending feuds in this arena. 
But we shall see nevertheless that, in relation to its practi- 
cal employment, reason has the right of admitting what, 
in the sphere of pure speculation, it would not be allowed 
to admit without sufficient proof. Such admissions, no 
doubt, detract from the perfection of speculation, but 
practical interests take no account of this. Here, there- 
fore, reason is in possession, without having to prove the 
legitimacy of its title, which, indeed, it would be [p. 777~\ 
difficult to do. The burden of proof rests, therefore, on 
the opponent ; and as he knows as little of the point in 
question, to enable him to prove its non-existence, as the 
other who maintains its reality, it is evident that there is 
an advantage on the side of him who maintains something 
as a practically necessary supposition (melior est conditio 
possidentis). He is clearly entitled, as it were in self- 
defence, to use the same weapons in support of his own 
good cause, which the opponent uses against it, that is, to 
employ hypotheses, which are not intended to strengthen 
the arguments in favour of his own view, but only to show 
that the opponent knows far too little of the subject under 
discussion to flatter himself that he possesses any advan- 
tage over us, so far as speculative insight is concerned. 

In the field of pure reason, therefore, hypotheses are 
admitted as weapons of defence only, not in order to 
establish a right, but simply in order to defend it ; and it 



Discipline of Pure Reason 

is our duty at all times to look for a real opponent within 
ourselves. Speculative reason in its transcendental em- 
ployment is by its very nature dialectical. The objections 
which we have to fear lie in ourselves. Wo must look for 
them as we look for old, but never superannuated claims, 
if we wish to destrov them, and thus to establish a per- 
manent peace. External tranquillity is a mere illusion. It 
is necessary to root up the very germ of these objections 
which lies in the nature of human reason ; and how can 
we root it up, unless we allow it freedom, nay, [p. JJ&^\ 
offer it nourishment, so that it may send out shoots, and 
thus discover itself to our eyes, so that we may afterwards 
destroy it with its very root ? Try yourselves therefore 
to discover objections of which no opponent has ever 
thought ; nay, lend him your weapons, and grant him the 
most favourable position which he could wish for. You 
have nothing to fear in all this, but much to hope for, 
namely, that you may gain a possession which no one will 
ever again venture to contest. 

In order to be completely equipped you require the 
hypotheses of pure reason also, which, although but leaden 
weapons (because not steeled by any law of experience), 
are yet quite as strong as those which any opponent is 
likely to use against you. If, therefore (for any not specu- 
lative reason), you have admitted the immaterial nature of 
the soul, which is not subject to any corporeal changes, 
and you are met by the difficulty that nevertheless experi- 
ence seems to prove both the elevation and the decay of 
our mental faculties as different modifications of our organs, 
you can weaken the force of this objection by saying that 
you look upon the body as a fundamental phenomenon 
only, which, in our present state (in this life), forms the 



Discipline of Pure Reason 625 

condition of all the faculties of our sensibility, and hence 
of our thought. In that case the separation from the body 
would be the end of the sensuous employment and the 
beginning of the intelligible employment of our faculty of 
knowledge. The body would thus have to be [p. 779] 
considered, not as the cause of our thinking, but only as a 
restrictive condition of it, and, therefore, if on one side as 
a support of our sensuous and animal life, on the other, all 
the more, as an impediment of our pure and spiritual life, 
so that the dependence of the animal life on the constitu- 
tion of the body would in no wise prove the dependence 
of our whole life on the state of our organs. You may go 
even further and discover new doubts which have either 
not been raised at all before, or at all events have not 
been carried far enough. 

Generation in the human race, as well as among irra- 
tional creatures, depends on so many accidents, on occasion, 
on sufficient sustenance, on the views and whims of govern- 
ment, nay, even on vice, that it is difficult to believe in 
the eternal existence of a being whose life has first begun 
under circumstances so trivial, and so entirely dependent 
on our own choice. As regards the continuance (here on 
earth) of the whole race, there is less difficulty, because 
the accidents in individual cases are subject nevertheless 
to a rule with regard to the whole. With regard to each 
individual, however, to expect so important an effect from 
such insignificant causes seems very strange. 15ut even 
against this you may adduce the following transcendental 
hypothesis, namely, that all life is really intelligible only, 
not subject to the changes of time, and neither [p. 780] 
beginning in birth, nor ending in death. You may say 
that this life is phenomenal only, that is, a sensuous repre- 
2 s 



626 Discipline of Pure Reason 

sentation of the pure spiritual life, and that the whole 
world of sense is but an image passing before our present 
mode of knowledge, but, like a dream, without any objec- 
tive reality in itself ; nay, that if we could see ourselves 
and other objects also as they really arc, we should see 
ourselves in a world of spiritual natures, our community 
with which did neither begin at our birth nor will end with 
the death o( the body, both being purely phenomenal. 

Although it is true that we do not know anything about 
what we have here been pleading hvpothctically against 
our opponents, and that we ourselves do not even seriously 
maintain it, it being simply an idea invented for self- 
defence and not even an idea of reason, yet we are acting 
throughout quite rationally. In answer to our opponent 
who imagines that he has exhausted all possibilities, and 
who wrongly represents the absence of empirical conditions 
as a proof of the total impossibility of our own belief, we 
are simply showing him that he can no more, by mere laws 
of experience, comprehend the whole field of possible 
things by themselves than we are able, outside of experi- 
ence, to establish anything for our reason on a really secure 
foundation. Because we bring forward such hypothetical 
defences against the pretensions of our boldly denying 
opponent, we must not be supposed to have [p. 781] 
adopted these opinions as our own. We abandon them so 
soon as we have disposed of the dogmatical conceit of our 
opponent. It seems no doubt very modest and moderate 
to maintain a simple negative position with regard to the 
assertions of other people ; but to attempt to represent 
objections as proofs of the opposite opinion is quite as 
arrogant as to assume the position of the affirming party 
and its opinions. 



Discipline of Pare Reason 627 

It is easy to see, therefore, that in the speculative em- 
ployment of reason hypotheses are of no value by them- 
selves, but relatively only, as opposed to the transcendental 
pretensions of the opposite party. For to extend the prin- 
ciples of possible experience to the possibility of things in 
general is quite as transcendent as to ascribe objective 
reality to concepts which cannot have an object except 
outside the limits of all possible experience. The asser- 
tory judgments of pure reason must (like everything known 
by reason) be either necessary or nothing at all. Reason, 
in fact, knows of no opinions. The hypotheses, however, 
which we have just been discussing are problematical 
judgments only, which, at least, cannot be refuted, though 
they can neither be proved by anything. They are noth- 
ing but private 1 opinions, but (for our own satis- [p. 782] 
faction) we cannot well do without them to counteract 
misgivings that may arise in our minds. In this character 
they should be maintained, but we must take great care 
less they should assume independent authority and a cer- 
tain absolute validity, and drown our reason beneath fic- 
tions and phantoms. 

THE DISCIPLINE OF PURE REASON 

Section IV 

The Discipline of Pure Reason with Regard to its Proofs 

What distinguishes the proofs of transcendental and syn- 
thetical propositions from all other proofs of a syntheti- 
cal knowledge a priori is this, that reason is not allowed 
here to apply itself directly to an object through its con- 

1 Read reine instead of keinc. 



628 Discipline of Pure Reason 

cepts, but has first to prove the objective validity of those 
concepts and the possibility of their synthesis a priori. 
This rule is not suggested by prudence only, but refers to 
the very nature and the possibility of such proofs. If I 
am to go beyond the concept of an object a priori, this is 
impossible without some special guidance coming to me 
from without that concept. In mathematics it is intuition 
a priori which thus guides my synthesis, so that all our 
conclusions may be drawn immediately from pure intui- 
tion. In transcendental knowledge the same [p. 783] 
guidance, SO long as we arc dealing with concepts of the 
understanding only, is to be found in possible experience. 
For here the proof does not show that the given concept 
(for instance, the concept of that which happens) leads 
directly to another concept ^that of a cause). This would 
be a saltus which nothing could justify. What our proof 
really shows is, that experience itself and therefore the 
object of experience would be impossible without such a 
(causal) connection. The proof, therefore, had at the 
same time to indicate the possibility of arriving syntheti- 
cally and a priori at a certain knowledge of things which 
was not contained in our concept of them. Unless we 
attend to this point, our proofs, like streams which have 
broken their banks, run wildly across the fields wherever 
the inclination of some hidden association may chance to 
lead them. The semblance of a conviction, based on sub- 
jective causes of association and mistaken for the percep- 
tion of a natural affinity, cannot balance the misgivings 
which are justly roused by such bold proceedings. Hence 
all attempts at proving the principle of sufficient reason 
have, according to the universal admission of all competent 
judges, been vain ; and before the appearance of transcen- 



Discipline of Pure Reason 629 

dental criticism it was thought better, as that principle 
could never be surrendered, to make a sturdy appeal to the 
common sense of mankind (an expedient which [p. 784] 
always shows that the cause of reason is desperate) than 
to attempt new dogmatical proofs of it. 

But, if the proposition that has to be proved is an 
assertion of pure reason, and if I even intend by means of 
pure ideas to go beyond my empirical concepts, it would 
be all the more necessary that the proof should contain 
the justification of such a step of synthesis (if it were 
possible) as a necessary condition of its own validity. 
The so-called proof of the simple nature of our thinking 
substance (soul), derived from the unity of apperception, 
seems very plausible ; but it is confronted by an inevi- 
table difficulty, because, as the absolute unity is not a 
concept that can be immediately referred to a perception, 
but, as an idea, can only be inferred, it is difficult to 
understand how the mere consciousness which is, or at 
least may be, contained in all thought, though it may be 
so far a simple representation, can lead me on to the 
consciousness and the knowledge of a thing, in which 
thought alone is contained. For if I represent to myself 
the power of my body, as in motion, it is then to me 
an absolute unity, and my representation of it is a simple 
one. I can, therefore, very well express this representa- 
tion by the motion of a point ; because the volume of the 
body is here of no consequence, and can, without any 
diminution of its power, be conceived as small as one 
likes, and, therefore, even as existing in one point. But 
I should never conclude from this that, if noth- [p. 785] 
ing is given to me but the motive power of a body, that 
body can be conceived as a simple substance, because its 



630 Discipline of Pure Reason 

representation is independent of the quantity of its vol- 
ume, and, therefore, simple. I thus deteet a paralogism, 
because the simple in the abstract is totally different from 
the simple as an object, and the ego which, conceived in 
the abstract, contains nothing manifold, can, as an object, 
when signifying the soul, become a very complex concept, 
comprehending and implying many things. In order to 
be prepared for such a paralogism (for unless we suspected 
it, the proof might excite no suspicion), it is absolutely 
necessary to be always in possession of a criterion of such 
synthetical propositions, which are meant to prove more 
than experience can ever supply. This criterion consists 
in our demanding that the proof should not be carried 
directly to the predicate in question, but that, first, the 
principle of the possibility of expanding our given concept 
a priori into ideas and realising them, should be estab- 
lished. If we always exercised this caution, and, before 
attempting any such proof, wisely considered ourselves, 
how, and with what degree of confidence, we might expect 
such an expansion through pure reason, and whence we 
might take, in such cases, knowledge which cannot be 
evolved from concepts nor anticipated with ref- [p. 786] 
erence to possible experience, we might spare ourselves 
many difficult, and yet fruitless endeavours, by not asking 
of reason what evidently is beyond its power, or rather, by 
subjecting reason, which when once under the influence of 
this passion for speculative conquest, is not easily checked, 
to a thorough discipline of moderation. 

The first rule, therefore, is to attempt no transcendental 
proofs before having first considered from whence we 
should take the principles on which such proofs are to be 
based, and by what right we may expect our conclusions 



Discipline of Pure Reason 63 1 

to be successful. If they are principles of the understand- 
ing (for instance of causality), it is useless to attempt to 
arrive, by means of them, at ideas of pure reason ; because 
they are valid only with regard to objects of experience. 
If they are principles of pure reason, it is again labour 
lost, because, though reason possesses such principles, 
they are all, as objective principles, dialectical and cannot 
be valid, except perhaps as regulative principles, for the 
empirical use of reason, in order to make it systematically 
coherent. If such so-called proofs exist already, we ought 
to meet their deceptive pleadings with the non liquet of a 
mature judgment; and although we may be unable to 
expose their sophisms, we have a perfect right [p. 787] 
to demand a deduction of the principles employed, which, 
if these principles are to have their origin in reason alone, 
will never be forthcoming. You may thus dispense with 
the analysis and refutation of every one of these sophisms, 
and dispose in a lump of the endless fallacies of Dialectic, 
by appealing to the tribunal of critical reason, which 
insists on laws. 

The second peculiarity of transcendental proofs is this, 
that for every transcendental proposition one proof only 
can be found. If I have to draw conclusions, not from 
concepts, but from the intuition which corresponds to a 
concept, whether it be pure intuition, as in mathematics, 
or empirical, as in physical science, the intuition on which 
my conclusions are to rest supplies me with manifold 
material for synthetical propositions, which I may connect 
in more than one way, so that, by starting from different 
points, I can arrive at the same conclusion by different 
paths. 

Every transcendental proposition, on the contrary, starts 



632 Discipline of Pure Reason 

from one concept only, and predicates the synthetical con- 
dition of the possibility of the object, according to that 
concept. There can therefore be but one proof, because 
beside that concept there is nothing else whereby that ob- 
ject could be determined. The proof therefore [p. 7S8] 
can contain nothing more but the determination of an 
object in general according to that concept, which is itself 
one only. In the transcendental Analytic, for instance, 
we had deduced the principle, that everything which 
happens has a cause, from the single condition of the 
objective possibility of the concept of an event in general, 
namely, that the determination of any event in time, and 
therefore the event itself also, as belonging to experience, 
would be impossible, unless it were subject to such a dy- 
namical rule. This is therefore the only possible proof; 
for the event which we represent to ourselves has objec- 
tive validity, that is, truth, on this condition only, that 
an object is determined as belonging to that concept by 
means of the law of causality. It is true that other argu- 
ments in support of this proposition have been attempted, 
for instance, one derived from contingency ; but if that 
argument is examined more carefully, we can discover no 
characteristic sign of contingency, except the happening, 
that is, existence preceded by the non-existence of the 
object, which leads us back to the same argument as be- 
fore. If the proposition has to be proved that everything 
which thinks is simple, no attention is paid to what is 
manifold in thought, and the concept of the ego only is 
kept in view, which is simple, and to which all thinking 
is referred. The same applies to the transcendental proof 
of the existence of God, which rests entirely on the re- 
ciprocability of the two concepts of a most real [p. 789] 



Discipline of Pure Reason 633 

and a necessary Being, and cannot be found anywhere 
else. 

By this caution the criticism of the assertions of reason 
is much simplified. Wherever reason operates with con- 
cepts only, only one proof is possible, if any. If therefore 
we see the dogmatist advance with his ten proofs, we may 
be sure that he has none. For if he had one which (as 
it ought to be in all matters of pure reason) had apodictic 
power, what need would he have of others ? His object 
can only be the same as that of the parliamentary lawyer 
who has one argument for one person, and another for 
another. He wants to take advantage of the weakness 
of the judges, who, without enquiring more deeply, and 
in order to get away as soon as possible, lay hold of the 
first argument that catches their attention, and decide 
accordingly. 

The third peculiar rule of pure reason, if it is once sub- 
jected to a proper discipline with regard to transcendental 
proofs, is this, that such proofs must never be apagogical 
or circumstantial, but always ostensive or direct. The 
direct or ostensive proof combines, with regard to every 
kind of knowledge, a conviction of its truth with an in- 
sight into its sources ; the apagogical proof, on the con- 
trary, though it may produce certainty, cannot help us to 
comprehend the truth in its connection with the grounds 
of its possibility. It is therefore a mere ex- [p. 790] 
pedient, and cannot satisfy all the requirements of reason. 
The apagogical proofs have, however, this advantage with 
regard to their evidence over direct proofs, that contradic- 
tion always carries with it more clearness in the repre- 
sentation than the best combination, and thus approaches 
more to the intuitional character of a demonstration. 



634 Discipline of Pure Reason 

The real reason why apagogical proofs are so much 
employed in different sciences, seems to be this. If the 
grounds from which some knowledge is to be derived are 
too numerous or too deeply hidden, one tries whether 
they may not be reached through their consequences. 
Now it is quite true that this modus ponens, that is, this 
inferring of the truth of some knowledge from the truth 
of its consequences, is only permitted, if all possible con- 
sequences flowing from it are true. In that case they 
have only one possible ground, which therefore is also 
the true one. This procedure, however, is impracticable, 
because to discover all possible consequences of any given 
proposition exceeds our powers. Nevertheless, this mode 
of arguing is employed, though under a certain indul- 
gence, whenever something is to be established as a hy- 
pothesis only, in which case a conclusion, according to 
analogy, is admitted, namely, that if as many consequences 
as one has tested agree with an assumed ground, all others 
will also agree with it. To change in this way a hypothe- 
sis into a demonstrated truth, is clearly impossi- [p. 791] 
ble. The modus tollais of reasoning, from consequences 
to their grounds, is not only perfectly strict, but also 
extremely easy. For if one single false consequence 
only can be drawn from a proposition, that proposition is 
wrong. Instead, therefore, of examining, for the sake of 
an ostensive proof, the whole series of grounds that may 
lead us to the truth of a cognition by means of a perfect 
insight into its possibility, we have only to prove that one 
single consequence, resulting from the opposite, is false, 
in order to show that the opposite itself is false, and 
therefore the cognition, which we had to prove, true. 

This apagogical method of proof, however, is admissible 



Discipline of Pure Reason 635 

in those sciences only where it is impossible to foist the 
subjective elements of our representations into the place 
of what is objective, namely, the knowledge of that which 
exists in the object. When this is not impossible, it must 
often happen that the opposite of any proposition contra- 
dicts the subjective conditions of thought only, but not 
the object itself, or, that both propositions contradict each 
other under a subjective condition, which is mistaken as 
objective, so that, as the condition is false, both may be 
false, without our being justified in inferring the truth of 
the one from the falseness of the other. 

In mathematics such subreptions are impos- [p. 792] 
sible ; and it is true, therefore, that the apagogical proof 
has its true place there. In natural science, in which 
everything is based on empirical intuitions, that kind of 
subreption can generally be guarded against by a repeated 
comparison of observations ; but even thus, this mode of 
proof is of little value there. The transcendental endeav- 
ours of pure reason, however, are all made within the 
very sphere of dialectical illusion, where what is subjective 
presents itself, nay, forces itself upon reason in its pre- 
misses as objective. Here, therefore, it can never be 
allowed, with reference to synthetical propositions, to jus- 
tify one's assertions by refuting their opposite. For, either 
this refutation may be nothing but the mere representa- 
tion of the conflict of the opposite opinion with the sub- 
jective conditions under which our reason could alone 
comprehend it, and this would be of no avail for rejecting 
the proposition itself, — (thus we see, for instance, that 
the unconditioned necessity of the existence of a Being 
cannot possibly be comprehended by us, which subjectively 
bars every speculative proof of a necessary Supreme Being, 



636 Disci pi uic of Part' Reason 

but by no means, the possibility of such a Being by i/sc/f), 
— or, on the other hand, it may be that both the affirma- 
tive and the negative party have been deceived by the 
transcendental illusion, and base their arguments on an 
impossible concept of an object. In that case the rule 
applies, non cuds nulla sunt pracdicata, that is, [p. 793] 
everything that has been asserted with regard to an ob- 
ject, whether affirmatively or negatively, is wrong, and we 
cannot therefore arrive apagogically at the knowledge of 
truth by the refutation of its opposite. If, for example, 
we assume that the world of sense is given by itself in its 
totality, it is wrong to conclude that it must be either 
infinite in space, or finite and limited ; for either is wrong, 
because phenomena (as mere representations) which never- 
theless are to be things by themselves (as objects) are 
something impossible, and the infinitude of this imaginary 
whole, though it might be unconditioned, would (because 
everything in phenomena is conditioned) contradict that 
very unconditioned quantity which is presupposed in its 
concept. 

The apagogical mode of proof is also the blind by which 
the admirers of our dogmatical philosophy have always 
been deceived. It may be compared to a prizefighter who 
is willing to prove the honour and the incontestable rights 
of his adopted party by offering battle to all and every 
one who should dare to doubt them. Such brawling, how- 
ever, settles nothing, but only shows the respective 
strength of the two parties, and even this on the part of 
those only who take the offensive. The spectators, seeing 
that each party is alternately conqueror and con- [p. 794] 
quered, are often led to regard the very object of the dis- 
pute with a certain amount of scepticism. In this, how- 



Discipline of Pure Reason 637 

ever, they are wrong, and it is sufficient to remind them 
of non defensoribus istis tempus eget. It is absolutely 
necessary that every one should plead his cause directly 
by means of a legitimate proof based on a transcendental 
deduction of the grounds of proof. Thus only can we see 
what he may have to say himself in favour of his own 
claims of reason. If his opponent relies on subjective 
grounds only, it is easy, no doubt, to refute him ; but this 
does not benefit the dogmatist, who generally depends 
quite as much on the subjective grounds of his judgment, 
and can be quite as easily driven into a corner by his 
opponent. If, on the contrary, both parties employ only 
the direct mode of proof, they will either themselves per- 
ceive the difficulty, nay, the impossibility of finding any 
title for their assertions, and appeal in the end to pre- 
scription only, or, our criticism will easily discover the 
dogmatical illusion, and compel pure reason to surrender 
its exaggerated pretensions in the sphere of speculative 
thought, and to retreat within the limits of its own domain, 
— that of practical principles. 



// 



METHOD OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 

[P- 795] 



CHAPTER II 

THE CANON OF PURE REASON 

It is humiliating, no doubt, for human reason that it can 
achieve nothing by itself, nay, that it stands in need of a 
discipline to check its vagaries, and to guard against the 
illusions arising from them. But, on the other hand, it 
elevates reason and gives it self-confidence, that it can 
and must exercise that discipline itself, and allows no 
censorship to any one else. The bounds, moreover, which 
it is obliged to set to its own speculative use check at the 
same time the sophistical pretensions of all its opponents, 
and thus secure everything that remains of its formed 
exaggerated pretensions against every possible attack. 
The greatest and perhaps the only advantage of all philos- 
ophy of pure reason seems therefore to be negative only ; 
because it serves, not as an organon for the extension, 
but as a discipline for the limitation of its domain, and 
instead of discovering truth, it only claims the modest 
merit of preventing error. 

Nevertheless, there must be somewhere a source of 
positive cognitions which belong to the domain of pure 
reason, and which perhaps, owing to some misunderstand- 

638 



Canon of Pure Reason 639 

ing only, may lead to error, while they form in [p. 796] 
reality the true goal of all the efforts of reason. How else 
could we account for that inextinguishable desire to gain 
a footing by any means somewhere beyond the limits of 
experience ? Reason has a presentiment of objects which 
possess a great interest for it. It enters upon the path of 
pure speculation in order to approach them, but they fly 
before it. May we not suppose that on the only path 
which is still open to it, namely, that of its practical em- 
ployments, reason may hope to meet with better success ? 
I understand by a canon a system of principles a priori 
for the proper employment of certain faculties of know- 
ledge in general. Thus general logic, in its analytical 
portion, is a canon for the understanding and reason in 
general, but only so far as the form is concerned, for it 
takes no account of any contents. Thus we saw that the 
transcendental analytic is the canon of the pure under- 
standing, and that it alone is capable of true synthetical 
knowledge a priori. When no correct use of a faculty of 
knowledge is possible, there is no canon, and as all syn- 
thetical knowledge of pure reason in its speculative em- 
ployment is, according to all that has been hitherto said, 
totally impossible, there exists no canon of the speculative 
employment of reason (for that employment is entirely 
dialectical), but all transcendental logic is, in this respect, 
disciplinary only. Consequently, if there exists [p. 797] 
any correct use of pure reason at all, and, therefore, a 
canon relating to it, that canon will refer not to the specu- 
lative, but to the practical use of reason, which wo shall 
now proceed to investigate. 



640 Canon of Pure Reason 

THE CANON OF PURE REASON 

First Section 

Of the Ultimate Aim of the Pure Use of our Reason 

Reason is impelled by a tendency of its nature to go 
beyond the field of experience, and to venture in its pure 
employment and by means of mere ideas to the utmost 
limits of all knowledge ; nay, it finds no rest until it has 
fulfilled its course and established an independent and sys- 
tematic whole of all knowledge. The question is, whether 
this endeavour rests on the speculative, or rather, exclu- 
sively on the practical interests of reason ? 

I shall say nothing at present of the success which has 
attended pure reason in its speculative endeavours, and 
only ask which are the problems, the solution of which 
forms its ultimate aim (whether that object be really 
reached or not), and in relation to which all other prob- 
lems are only means to an end. These highest aims must 
again, according to the nature of reason, possess [p. 798] 
a certain unity in order to advance by their union that 
interest of humanity which is second to no other. 

The highest aim to which the speculation of reason in 
its transcendental employment is directed comprehends 
three objects : the freedom of the will, the immortality of 
the soul, and the existence of God. The purely specu- 
lative interest of reason in every one of these three 
questions is very small, and, for its sake alone, this 
fatiguing and ceaseless labour of transcendental investi- 
gation would hardly have been undertaken, because what- 
ever discoveries may be made, they could never be used 



Canon of Pure Reason 64 1 

in a way that would be advantageous in concreto, that is, 
in the investigation of nature. 

Our will may be free, but this would only refer to the 
intelligible cause of our volition. With regard to the 
phenomena in which that will manifests itself, that is, our 
actions, we have to account for them (according to an 
inviolable maxim without which reason could not be em- 
ployed for empirical purposes at all), in no other way than 
for all other phenomena of nature, that is, according to 
her unchangeable laws. 

Secondly, the spiritual nature of the soul, and with it 
its immortality, may be understood by us, yet we could not 
base upon this any explanation, either with regard to the 
phenomena of this life, or the peculiar nature of a [p. 799] 
future state, because our concept of an incorporeal nature- 
is purely negative and does not expand our knowledge in 
the least, nor does it offer any fit material for drawing 
consequences, except such as are purely fictitious, and 
could never be countenanced by philosophy. 

Thirdly, even admitting that the existence of a highest 
intelligence had been proved, we might, no doubt, use it 
in order to make the design in the constitution of the 
world and its order in general intelligible, but we should 
never be justified in deriving from it any particular ar- 
rangement, or disposition, or in boldly inferring it where 
it cannot be perceived. For it is a necessary rule for the 
speculative employment of reason, never to pass by natural 
causes, and, abandoning what we may learn from experi- 
ence, to derive something which we know, from something 
which entirely transcends all our knowled 

In one word, these three propositions remain always 
transcendent for speculative reason, and admit of no 

2T 



642 Canon of Pure Reason 

immanent employment, that is, an employment admissible 
for objects of experience, and therefore of some real utility 
to ourselves, but are by themselves entirely valueless and 
yet extremely difficult exertions of our reason. 

If, therefore, these three cardinal propositions are of no 
use to us, so far as knowledge is concerned, and are yet so 
strongly recommended to us by our reason, their true 
value will probably be connected with our [p. 800] 
practical interests only. 

I call practical whatever is possible through freedom. 
When the conditions of the exercise of our free-will are 
empirical, reason can have no other but a regulative use, 
serving only to bring about the unity of empirical laws. 
Thus, for instance, in the teaching of prudence, the whole 
business of reason consists in concentrating all the objects 
of our desires in one, namely, happiness > and in co-ordinat- 
ing the means for obtaining it. Reason, therefore, can 
give us none but pragmatic laws of free action for the at- 
tainment of the objects recommended to us by the senses, 
and never pure laws, determined entirely a priori. Pure 
practical laws, on the contrary, the object of which is given 
by reason entirely a priori, and which convey commands, 
not under empirical conditions, but absolutely, would be 
products of pure reason. Such are the moral laws, and 
these alone, therefore, belong to the sphere of the practical 
use of reason, and admit of a canon. 

All the preparations of reason, therefore, in what may 
be called pure philosophy, are in reality directed to those 
three problems only. These themselves, however, have a 
still further object, namely, to know what ought to be done, 
if the will is free, if there is a God, and if there is a future 
world. As this concerns our actions with reference to the 



Ca?wii of Pure Reason 643 

highest aim of life, we see that the last intention [p. 801] 
of nature in her wise provision was really, in the constitu- 
tion of our reason, directed to moral interests only. 

We must be careful, however, lest, as we are now con- 
sidering a subject which is foreign to transcendental 
philosophy, 1 we should lose ourselves in episodes, and 
injure the unity of the system, while on the other side, if 
we say too little of this new matter, there might be a lack 
of clearness and persuasion. I hope to avoid both dangers 
by keeping as close as possible to what is transcendental, 
and by leaving entirely aside what may be psychological, 
that is, empirical in it. 

I have, therefore, first to remark that for the present 
I shall use the concept of freedom in its practical meaning 
only, taking no account of the other concept of freedom 
in its transcendental meaning, which cannot be presup- 
posed empirically as an explanation of phenomena, but is 
itself a problem of reason and has been disposed [p. 802] 
of before. A will is purely animal {arbitrium brutum) when 
it is determined by nothing but sensuous impulses, that is, 
pathologically. A will, on the contrary, which is indepen- 
dent of sensuous impulses, and can be determined therefore 
by motives presented by reason alone, is called Free-will 
(arbitrium liberum), and everything connected with this, 
whether as cause or effect, is called practical Practical 
freedom can be proved by experience. For human will is 

1 All practical concepts relate to objects of pleasure or displeasure, that is. 
of joy or pain, and, therefore, at least indirectly, to objects <>f our Peelings. 
But, as feeling is not a faculty of representing things, but lies outside the whole 
field of our powers of cognition, the elements of our judgments, so far ns they 
relate to pleasure or pain, that is, the elements of practical judgments, do not 
belong to transcendental philosophy, which is concerned exclusively with pure 
cognitions a priori. 



644 Canon of Pure Reason 

not determined by that only which excites, that is, im- 
mediately affects the senses ; but we possess the power to 
overcome the impressions made on the faculty of our sen- 
suous desires, by representing to ourselves what, in a more 
distant way, may be useful or hurtful. These considera- 
tions of what is desirable with regard to our whole state, 
that is, of what is good and useful, are based entirely on 
reason. Reason, therefore, gives laws which are im- 
peratives, that is, objective laws of freedom, and tell us 
what ought to take place, though perhaps it never does take 
place, differing therein from the laws of nature, which 
relate only to what does take place. These laws of free- 
dom, therefore, arc called practical laws. 

Whether reason in prescribing these laws is [p. 803] 
not itself determined by other influences, and whether 
what, in relation to sensuous impulses, is called freedom, 
may not, with regard to higher and more remote causes, 
be nature again, does not concern us while engaged in 
these practical questions, and while demanding from reason 
nothing but the rule of our conduct. It is a purely specula- 
tive question which, while we are only concerned with what 
we ought or ought not to do, may well be left aside. We 
know practical freedom by experience as one of the natural 
causes, namely, as a causality of reason in determining the 
will, while transcendental freedom demands the indepen- 
dence of reason itself (with reference to its causality in be- 
ginning a series of phenomena) from all determining causes 
in the world of sense, thus running counter, as it would 
seem, to the law of nature and therefore to all possible 
experience, and remaining a problem. Reason, however, 
in its practical employment has nothing to do with this 
problem, so that there remain but two questions in a 



Canon of Pure Reason 645 

canon of pure reason which concern the practical interest 
of pure reason, and with regard to which a canon of their 
employment must be possible, namely : Is there a God ? 
Is there a future life ? The question of transcendental 
freedom refers to speculative knowledge only, and may be 
safely left aside as quite indifferent when we are concerned 
with practical interests. A sufficient discussion [p. 804] 
of it may be found in the antinomy of pure reason. 

CANON OF PURE REASON 
Section II 

Of the Ideal of the Summum Bonunt as determining the 
Ultimate Aim of Pure Reason 

Reason, in its speculative employment, conducted us 
through the field of experience, and, as it could find no 
perfect satisfaction there, from thence to speculative ideas 
which, however, in the end conducted us back again to 
experience, and thus fulfilled their purpose in a manner 
which, though useful, was not at all in accordance with 
our expectation. We may now have one more trial, 
namely, to see whether pure reason may be met with in 
practical use also, and whether thus it may lead to ideas 
which realise- the highest aims of pure reason as we have 
just stated them, and whether therefore from the point of 
view of its practical interest, reason may not be able to 
grant us what it entirely refused to do with regard to its 
speculative interest. 

The whole interest of my reason, whether speculative or 
practical, is concentrated in the three following ques- 
tions:— [ p . 805] 



646 Canon of Pure Reason 



1. What can I know? 

2. What should I do ? 

3. What may I hope ? 



The first question is purely speculative. We have, as I 
flatter myself, exhausted all possible answers, and found, 
at last, that with which no doubt reason must be satisfied, 
and, except with regard to the practical, has just cause to 
be satisfied. We remained, however, as far removed from 
the two great ends to which the whole endeavour of pure 
reason was really directed as if we had consulted our ease 
and declined the whole task from the very beginning. So 
far then as knowledge is concerned, so much is certain and 
clear that, with regard to these two problems, knowledge 
can never fall to our lot. 

The second question is purely practical. As such it 
may come within the cognisance of pure reason, but is, 
even then, not transcendental, but moral, and cannot, con- 
sequently, occupy our criticism by itself. 

The third question, namely, what may I hope for, if I 
do what I ought to do ? is at the same time practical and 
theoretical, the practical serving as a guidance to the an- 
swer to the theoretical and, in its highest form, specula- 
tive question ; for all hoping is directed towards happiness 
and is, with regard to practical interests and the law of 
morality, the same as knowing and the law of nature, with 
regard to the theoretical cognition of things. The former 
arrives at last at a conclusion that something is [p. 806] 
(which determines the last possible aim) because some- 
thing ongJit to take place ; the latter, that something is 
(which operates as the highest cause) because something 
does take place. 



Canon of Pure Reason 64/ 

Happiness is the satisfaction of all our desires, exten- 
sively, in regard to their manifoldness, intensively, in re- 
gard to their degree, and protetisively, in regard to their 
duration. The practical law, derived from the motive of 
happiness, I call pragmatical (rule of prudence) ; but the 
law, if there is such a law, which has no other motive but 
to deserve to be happy, I call moral (law of morality). The 
former advises us what we have to do, if we wish to pos- 
sess happiness ; the latter dictates how we ought to con- 
duct ourselves in order to deserve happiness. The former 
is founded on empirical principles, for I cannot know, 
except by experience, what desires there are which are to 
be satisfied, nor what are the natural means of satisfying 
them. The second takes no account of desires and the 
natural means of satisfying them, and regards only the 
freedom of any rational being and the necessary conditions 
under which alone it can harmonise with the distribution 
of happiness according to principles. It can therefore be 
based on mere ideas of pure reason, and known a priori. 
I assume that there really exist pure moral laws [p. 807] 
which entirely a priori (without regard to empirical 
motives, that is, happiness) determine the use of the 
freedom of any rational being, both with regard to what 
has to be done and what has not to be done, and that 
these laws are imperative absolutely (not hypothetically 
only on the supposition of other empirical ends), and 
therefore in every respect necessary. I feel justified in 
assuming this, by appealing, not only to the arguments of 
the most enlightened moralists, but also to the moral 
judgment of every man, if he only tries to conceive such 
a law clearly. 

Pure reason, therefore, contains not indeed in its specu- 



648 Canon of Pure Reason 

lative, yet in its practical, or, more accurately, its moral 
employment, principles of the possibility of experience, 
namely, of such actions as migJit be met with in the his- 
tory of man according to moral precepts. For as reason 
commands that such actions should take place, they must 
be possible, and a certain kind of systematical unity also, 
namely, the moral, must be possible ; while it was impossi- 
ble to prove the systematical unity of nature according to 
the speculative principles of reason. For reason, no doubt, 
possesses causality with respect to freedom in general, 
but not with respect to the whole of nature, and moral 
principles of reason may indeed produce free actions, but 
not laws of nature. Consequently, the principles of pure 
reason possess objective reality in their practi- [p. 808] 
cal and more particularly in their moral employment. 

I call the world, in so far as it may be in accordance 
with all moral laws which, by virtue of the freedom of 
rational beings it may, and according to the necessary 
laws of morality it ought to be, a moral world. As here 
we take no account of all conditions (aims) and even of 
all impediments to morality (the weakness or depravity of 
human nature), this world is conceived as. an intelligible 
world only. It is, therefore, so far a mere idea, though a 
practical' idea, which can and ought really .to exercise its 
influence on the sensible world in order to bring it, as 
far as possible, into conformity with that idea. The idea 
of a moral world has therefore objective reality, not as 
referring to an object of intelligible intuition (which we 
cannot even conceive), but as referring to the sensible 
world, conceived as an object of pure reason in its prac- 
tical employment, and as a corpus mysticnm of rational 
beings dwelling in it, so far as their free-will, placed under 



Canon of Picre Reason 649 

moral laws, possesses a thorough systematical unity both 
with itself and with the freedom of everybody else. 

The answer, therefore, of the first of the two questions 
of pure reason with reference to practical in- [p. 809] 
terests, is this, ( do that which will render thee deserving 
of happiness! The second question asks, how then, if I 
conduct myself so as to be deserving of happiness, may 
I hope thereby to obtain happiness ? The answer to this 
question depends on this, whether the principles of pure 
reason which a priori prescribe the law, necessarily also 
connect this hope with it ? 

I say, then, that just as the moral principles are neces- 
sary according to reason in its practical employment, it is 
equally necessary according to reason in its theoretic em- 
ployment to assume that everybody has reason to hope 
to obtain happiness in the same measure in which he has 
rendered himself deserving of it in his conduct; and that, 
therefore, the system of morality is inseparably, though 
only in the idea of pure reason, connected with that of 
happiness. 

In an intelligible, that is, in a moral world, in conceiv- 
ing which we take no account of any of the impediments 
to morality (desires, etc.), such a system, in which happi- 
ness is proportioned to morality, may even be considered 
as necessary, because freedom, as repelled or restrained 
by the moral law, is itself the cause of general happiness, 
and rational beings therefore themselves, under the guid- 
ance of such principles, the authors of the permanent 
well-being of themselves, and at the same time of others. 
But such a system of self-rewarding morality is [p. 810] 
an idea only, the realisation of which depends on every- 
body doing what he ought to do, that is, on all actions of 



650 Canon of Pure Reason 

reasonable beings being so performed as if they sprang 
from one supreme will, comprehending within itself or 
under itself all private wills. But, as the moral law re- 
mains binding upon every one in the use of his freedom, 
even if others do not conform to that law, it is impossible 
that either the nature of things in the world, or the causal- 
ity of the actions themselves, or their relation to morality, 
should determine in what relation the consequences of 
such actions- should stand to happiness. If, therefore, 
we take our stand on nature only, the necessary connec- 
tion of a hope of happiness with the unceasing endeavour 
of rendering oneself deserving of happiness, cannot be 
known by reason, but can only be hoped for, if a highest 
reason, which rules according to moral laws, is accepted 
at the same time as the cause of nature. 

I call the idea of such an intelligence in which the most 
perfect moral will, united with the highest blessedness, is 
the cause of all happiness in the world, so far as it corre- 
sponds exactly with morality, that is, the being worthy 
of happiness, the ideal of the supreme good. It is, there- 
fore, in the ideal only of the supreme original good that 
pure reason can find the ground of the practically neces- 
sary connection of both elements of the highest [p. 811] 
derivative good, namely, of an intelligible, that is, moral 
world. As we are bound by reason to conceive ourselves 
as belonging necessarily to such a world, though the 
senses present us with nothing but a world of phenomena, 
we shall have to accept the other world as the result of 
our conduct in this world of sense (in which we see no 
such connection between goodness and happiness), and 
therefore as to us a future world. Hence it follows that 
God and a future life are two suppositions which, accord- 



Canon of Pure Reason 651 

ing to the principles of pure reason, cannot be separated 
from the obligation which that very reason imposes on us. 

Morality, by itself, constitutes a system, but not so 
happiness, unless it is distributed in exact proportion to 
morality. This, however, is possible in an intelligible 
world only under a wise author and ruler. Such a ruler, 
together with life in such a world, which we must con- 
sider as future, reason compels us to admit, unless all 
moral laws are to be considered as idle dreams, because, 
without that supposition, the necessary consequences, 
which the same reason connects with these laws, would 
be absent. Hence everybody looks upon moral laws as 
commands, which they could not be if they did not con- 
nect a priori adequate consequences with their rules, and 
carried with them both promises and threats. Nor could 
they do this unless they rested on a necessary Being, as 
the supreme good, which alone can render the [p. 812] 
unity of such a design possible. 

Leibniz called the world, if we have regard only to the 
rational beings in it, and their mutual relations according 
to moral laws and under the government of the supreme 
good, the kingdom of grace, distinguishing it from the 
kingdom of nature, in which these beings, though stand- 
ing under moral laws, expect no other consequences from 
their conduct but such as follow according to the course 
of nature of our sensible world. To view ourselves as 
belonging to the kingdom of grace, in which all happiness 
awaits us, except in so far as we have diminished our 
share in it through our unworthiness of being happy, is 
a practically necessary idea of reason. 

Practical laws, in so far as they become at the same 
time subjective grounds of actions, that is, subjective 



652 Canon of Pure Reason 

principles, arc called maxims. The criticism of morality, 
with regard to its purity and its results, takes place ac- 
cording to ideas, the practical observance of its laws, accord- 
ing to maxims. 

It is necessary that the whole course of our life should 
be subject to moral maxims ; but this is impossible, unless 
11 connects with the moral law, which is a mere idea, 
an efficient cau.se, which assigns to all conduct, in accord- 
ance with the moral law, an issue accurately corresponding 
to our highest aims, whether in this or in another [p. 813] 
life. Thus without a God and without a world, not 
visible to us now, but hoped for, the glorious ideas of 
morality are indeed objects of applause and admiration, 
but not springs of purpose and action, because they fail 
to fulfil all the aims which are natural to every rational 
being, and which are determined a priori by the same 
pure reason, and therefore necessary. 

Our reason does by no means consider happiness alone 
as the perfect good. It does not approve of it (however 
much inclination may desire it), except as united with 
desert, that is, with perfect moral conduct. Nor is 
morality alone, and with it mere desert of being happy, 
the perfect good. To make it perfect, he who has con- 
ducted himself as not unworthy of happiness, must be 
able to hope to participate in it. Even if freed from all 
private views and interests reason, were it to put itself in 
the place of a being that had to distribute all happiness 
to others, could not judge otherwise ; because in the 
practical idea both elements are essentially connected, 
though in such a way that our participation in happiness 
should be rendered possible by the moral character as a 
condition, and not conversely the moral character by the 



Canon of Pure Reason 653 

prospect of happiness. For, in the latter case, the [p. 814] 
character would not be moral, nor worthy therefore of 
complete happiness ; a happiness which, in the eyes of 
reason, admits of no limitation but such as arises from 
our own immoral conduct. 

Happiness, therefore, in exact proportion with the 
morality of rational beings who are made worthy of happi- 
ness by it, constitutes alone the supreme good of a world 
into which we must necessarily place ourselves according 
to the commands of pure but practical reason. But this 
is an intelligible world only, and a sensible world never 
promises us such a systematical unity of ends as arising 
from the nature of things. Nor is the reality of this unity 
founded on anything but the admission of a supreme 
original good, so that independent reason, equipped with 
all the requirements of a supreme cause, founds, main- 
tains, and completes, according to the most perfect 
design, the universal order of things which, in the world 
of sense, is almost completely hidden from our sight. 

This moral theology has this peculiar advantage over 
speculative theology, that it leads inevitably to the con- 
cept of a sole, most perfect, and rational first Being, to 
which speculative theology does not even lead us on, 
on objective grounds, much less give us a conviction of 
it. For neither in transcendental nor in natural theology, 
however far reason may carry us on, do we find any real 
ground for admitting even one sole being which we should 
be warranted in placing before all natural causes [p. 815] 
and on which we might make them in all respects to 
depend. On the other hand, if, from the point of view 
of moral unity as a necessary law of the universe, we 
consider what cause alone could give to it its adequate 



654 Canon of Pure Reason 

effect, and therefore its binding force with regard to 
ourselves, we find that it must be one sole supreme will 
which comprehends all these laws within itself. For 
how with different wills should we find complete unity 
of ends 3 That will must be omnipotent, in order that the 
whole of nature and its relation to morality and the world 
may be subject to it ; omniscient, that it may know the 
most secret springs of our sentiments and their moral 
worth ; omnipresent, that it may be near for supplying 
immediately all that is required by the highest interests 
of the world ; eternal, that this harmony of nature and 
freedom may never fail, and so on. 

Hut this systematical unity of ends in this world of 
intelligences which, if looked upon as mere nature, may 
be called a sensible world only, but which, if considered 
as a system of freedom, may be called an intelligible, 
that is, a moral world {regnum gratiae), leads inevitably 
also to the admission of a unity of design in all things 
which constitute this great universe according to general 
natural laws, just as the former (unity) was according to 
general and necessary laws of morality. In this way prac- 
tical and speculative reason become united. The world 
must be represented as having originated from an idea, 
if it is to harmonise with that employment of reason 
without which we should consider ourselves [p. 816] 
unworthy of reason, namely, with its moral employment, 
which is founded entirely on the idea of the supreme 
good. In this way the study of nature tends to assume 
the form of a teleological system, and becomes in its 
widest extension physico-theology. And this, as it starts 
from the moral order as a unity founded on the essence 
of freedom, and not accidentally brought about by ex- 



Canon of Pure Reason 655 

ternal commands, traces the design of nature to grounds 
which must be inseparably connected a priori with the 
internal possibility of things, and leads thus to a tran- 
scendental theology \ which takes the ideal of the highest 
ontological perfection as the principle of systematical 
unity which connects all things according to general and 
necessary laws of nature, because they all have their 
origin in the absolute necessity of the one original Being. 

What use can we make of our understanding, even 
in respect to experience, if we have not aims before 
us ? The highest aims, however, are those of morality, 
and these we can only know by means of pure reason. 
Even with their help and guidance, however, we could 
make no proper use of the knowledge of nature, unless 
nature itself had established a unity of design : for with- 
out this we should ourselves have no reason, [p. 817] 
because there would be no school for it, nor any culture 
derived from objects which supply the material for such 
concepts. This unity of design is necessary and founded 
on the essence of free-will, which must, therefore, as con- 
taining the condition of its application in concreto, be so 
likewise ; so that, in reality, the transcendental develop- 
ment of the knowledge obtained by our reason would be, 
not the cause, but only the effect of that practical order 
and design which pure reason imposes upon us. 

We find therefore in the history of human reason also 
that, before the moral concepts were sufficiently purified 
and refined, and before the systematical unity of the ends 
was clearly understood, according to such concepts and in 
accordance with necessary principles, the then existing 
knowledge of nature and even a considerable amount of 
the culture of reason in many other branches of science 



656 Canon of Pure Reason 

could only produce crude and vague conceptions of the 
Deity, or allow of an astonishing indifference with regard 
to that question. A greater cultivation of moral ideas, 
which became necessary through the extremely pure moral 
law of our religion, directed our reason to that object 
through the interest which it forced us to take in it, 
and without the help either of a more extended know- 
ledge of nature, or of more correct and trustworthy tran- 
scendental views (which have been wanting in all ages). 
A concept of the Divine Being was elaborated [p. 818] 
which we now hold to be correct, not because speculative 
reason has convinced us of its correctness, but because it 
fully agrees with the moral principles of reason. And 
thus, after all, it is pure reason only, but pure reason in 
its practical employment, which may claim the merit of 
connecting with our highest interest that knowledge 
which pure speculation could only guess at without 
being able to establish its validity, and of having made 
it, not indeed a demonstrated dogma, but a supposition 
absolutely necessary to the most essential ends of reason. 
But after practical reason has reached this high point, 
namely, the concept of a sole original Being as the 
supreme good, it must not imagine that it has raised 
itself above all empirical traditions of its application and 
soared up to an immediate knowledge of new objects, and 
thus venture to start from that concept and to deduce 
from it the moral laws themselves. For it was these very 
laws the internal practical necessity of which led us to the 
admission of an independent cause, or of a wise ruler of 
the world that should give effect to them. We ought not, 
therefore, to consider them afterwards again as accidental 
and derived from the mere will of the ruler, particularly as 



Canon of Pure Reason 657 

we could have no concept of such a will, if we had not 
formed it in accordance with those laws. So [p. 819] 
far as practical reason is entitled to lead us we shall 
not look upon actions as obligatory because they are the 
commands of God, but look upon them as divine com- 
mands because we feel an inner obligation to follow 
them. We shall study freedom according to the unity 
of design determined by the principles of reason, and 
we shall believe ourselves to be acting in accordance 
with the Divine will in so far only as we hold sacred 
the moral law which reason teaches us from the nature 
of actions themselves. We shall believe ourselves to be 
serving Him only by promoting everything that is best 
in the world, both in ourselves and in others. Moral 
theology is, therefore, of immanent use only, teaching 
us to fulfil our destiny here in the world by adapting 
ourselves to the general system of ends, without either 
fanatically or even criminally abandoning the guidance 
of reason and her moral laws for our proper conduct in 
life, in order to connect it directly with the idea of the 
Supreme Being. This would be a transcendent use of 
moral theology which, like a transcendent use of mere 
speculation, must inevitably pervert and frustrate the 
ultimate aims of reason. 

CANON OF PURE REASON [p. 820] 

Section III 

Of Trowing, Knowing, and Believing 

The holding a thing to be true is an event in our under- 
standing which, though it may rest on objective grounds, 

2U 



658 Canon of Pure Reason 

requires also subjective causes in the mind of the person 
who is to judge. If the judgment is valid for everybody, 
if only he is possessed of reason, then the ground of it 
is objectively sufficient, and the holding it to be true is 
called conviction. If, on the contrary, it has its ground 
in the peculiar character of the subject only, it is called 
persuasion. 

Persuasion is a mere illusion, the ground of the judg- 
ment, though it lies solely in the subject, being regarded 
as objective. Such a judgment has, therefore, private 
validity only, and the holding it to be true cannot be 
communicated to others. Truth, however, depends on 
agreement with the object, and, with regard to it, the 
judgments of every understanding must agree with each 
other (consoiticntia uni tertio consent inn t inter se, etc.). 
An external criterion, therefore, as to whether our hold- 
ing a thing to be true be conviction or only persuasion, 
consists in the possibility of communicating it, and finding 
its truth to be valid for the reason of every man. For, 
in that case, there is at least a presumption that the 
ground of the agreement of all judgments, in [p. 821] 
spite of the diversity of the subjects, rests upon the 
common ground, namely, on the object with which they 
all agree, and thus prove the truth of the judgment. 

Persuasion, therefore, cannot be distinguished from con- 
viction, subjectively, so long as the subject views its 
judgment as a phenomenon of his own mind only; the 
experiment, however, which we make with the grounds 
that seem valid to us, by trying to find out whether 
they will produce the same effect on the reason of others, 
is a means, though only a subjective means, not indeed 
of producing conviction, but of detecting the merely 



Canon of Pure Reason 659 

private validity of the judgment, that is, of discovering 
in it what is merely persuasion. 

If we are able besides to analyse the subjective causes 
of our judgment, which we have taken for its objective 
grounds, and thus explain the deceptive judgment as a 
phenomenon in our mind, without having recourse to the 
object itself, we expose the illusion and are no longer 
deceived by it, although we may continue to be tempted 
by it, in a certain degree, if, namely, the subjective cause 
of the illusion is inherent in our nature. 

I cannot maintain anything, that is, affirm it as a judg- 
ment necessarily valid for everybody, except it work con- 
viction. Persuasion I may keep for myself, if it [p. 822] 
is agreeable to me, but I cannot, and ought not to attempt 
to make it binding on any but myself. 

The holding anything to be true, or the subjective valid- 
ity of a judgment admits, with reference to the conviction 
which is at the same time valid objectively, of the three 
following degrees, trowing, believing, knowing. Trowing is 
to hold true, with the consciousness that it is insufficient 
both subjectively and objectively. If the holding true is 
sufficient subjectively, but is held to be insufficient objec- 
tively, it is called believing ; while, if it is sufficient both 
subjectively and objectively, it is called knowing. Subjec- 
tive sufficiency is called conviction (for myself), objective 
sufficiency is called certainty (for everybody). I shall not 
dwell any longer on the explanation of such easy concepts. 

I must never venture to trow, or to be of opinion, with- 
out knowing at least something by means of which a judg- 
ment, problematical by itself, is connected with truth, 
which connection, though it involves not a complete truth, 
is yet attended with more than arbitrary fiction. More- 



f o6o Canon of Pure Reason 

over, the law of such a connection must be certain. For 
if, own with regard to this law, I should have nothing but 
an opinion, all would become a mere play of the imagina- 
tion, without the least relation to truth. 

In the judgments of pure reason opinio)! is not per- 
mitted. For, as they are not based on empirical grounds, 
but everything has to be known a priori, and [p. 823] 
everything therefore must be necessary, the principle of 
connection in them requires universality and necessity, 
and consequently perfect certainty, without which there 
would be nothing to lead us on to truth. Hence it is 
absurd to have an opinion in pure mathematics; here one 
must either know, or abstain from pronouncing any judg- 
ment. The same applies to the principles of morality, 
because one must not hazard an action on the mere opinion 
that it is allowed, but must know it to be so. 

In the transcendental employment of reason, on the 
contraix', mere opinion, no doubt, would be too little, but 
knowledge too much. Speculatively, therefore, we cannot 
here form any judgment at all, because the subjective 
grounds on which we hold a thing to be true, as for in- 
stance those which may very well produce belief, are not 
approved of in speculative questions, as they cannot be 
held without empirical support, nor, if communicated to 
others, can produce the same effect on them. 

Nor can the theoretically insufficient acceptance of truth 
be called belief, except from a practical point of 'view. And 
this practical view refers either to skill or to morality, the 
former being concerned with any contingent and casual 
ends and objects whatsoever, the latter with absolutely 
necessary ends only. 

If we have once proposed an object or end to ourselves, 



Canon of Pure Reason 66 1 

the conditions of attaining it are hypothetically necessary. 
This necessity is subjective, and yet but rela- [p. 824] 
tively sufficient, if I know of no other conditions under 
which the end can be attained : it is sufficient absolutely 
and for every one, if I am convinced that no one can know 
of other conditions, leading to the attainment of our end. 
In the former case my assuming and holding certain condi- 
tions as true is merely an accidental belief, while in the 
latter case it is a necessary belief. Thus a physician, for 
instance, may feel that he must do something for a patient, 
who is in danger. But as he does not know the nature of 
the illness, he observes the symptoms, and arrives at the 
conclusion, as he knows nothing else, that it is phthisis. 
His belief, according to his own judgment, is contingent 
only, and he knows that another might form a better judg- 
ment. It is this kind of contingent belief which, neverthe- 
less, supplies a ground for the actual employment of means 
to certain actions, which I call pragmatic belief. 

The usual test, whether something that is maintained 
be merely persuasion, or a subjective conviction at least, 
that is, firm belief, is betting. People often pronounce 
their views with such bold and uncompromising assurance 
that they seem to have abandoned all fear of error. A bet 
startles them. Sometimes it turns out that a man has 
persuasion sufficient to be valued at one ducat, but not at 
ten ; he is ready to venture the first ducat, but [p. 825] 
with ten, he becomes aware for the first time that, after 
all, it might be possible that he should be mistaken. If 
we imagine that we have to stake the happiness of our 
whole life, the triumphant air of our judgment drops con- 
siderably; we become extremely shy, and suddenly discover 
that our belief does not reach so far. Thus pragmatic 



662 Canon of Pure Reason 

belief admits of degrees which, according to the difference 

of the interests at stake, may be large or small. 

Now it is true, no doubt, that, though with reference to 
an object of our belief, we can do nothing, and our opinion 
is, therefore, purely theoretical, yet in many cases we can 
represent and imagine to ourselves an undertaking for 
which we might think that we had sufficient inducements, 
if any means existed of ascertaining the truth of the mat- 
ter. Thus, even in purely theoretical judgments, there is 
an analogon of practical judgments to which the word 
belief may be applied, and which we shall therefore call 
doctrinal belief. If it were possible to apply any test of 
experience, I should be ready to stake the whole of my 
earthly goods on my belief that at least one of the planets 
which we see is inhabited. Hence I say that it is not only 
an opinion, but a strong belief, on the truth of which I 
should risk even many advantages of life, that there are 
inhabitants in other worlds. 

Now we must admit that the doctrine of the [p. 826] 
existence of God belongs to doctrinal belief. For although, 
with reference to my theoretical knowledge of the world, 
I can produce nothing which would make this thought a 
necessary supposition as a condition of my being able to 
explain the phenomena of the world, but on the contrary 
am bound to use my reason as if everything were mere 
nature, nevertheless, the unity of design is so important 
a condition of the application of reason to nature that I 
cannot ignore it, especially as experience supplies so many 
examples of it. Of that unity of design, however, I know 
no other condition, which would make it a guidance in 
my study of nature, but the supposition that a supreme 
intelligence has ordered all things according to the wisest 



Canon of Pure Reason 663 

ends. As a condition, therefore, of, it may be, a contin- 
gent, but not unimportant end, namely, in order to have a 
guidance in the investigation of nature, it is necessary to 
admit a wise author of the world. The result of my ex- 
periment confirms the usefulness of this supposition so 
many times, while nothing decisive can be adduced against 
it, that I am really saying far too little, if I call my accep- 
tation of it a mere opinion, and it may be said, even with 
regard to these theoretical matters, that I firmly believe in 
God. Still, if we use our words strictly, this belief must 
always be called doctrinal, and not practical, such as the 
theology of nature (physical theology) must al- [p. 827] 
ways and necessarily produce. In the same wisdom, and 
in the prominent endowments of human nature, combined 
with the inadequate shortness of life, another sufficient 
ground may be found for the doctrinal belief in the future 
life of the human soul. 

The expression of belief is in such cases an expression 
of modesty from the objective point of view, and yet, at 
the same time, a firm confidence from a subjective. If 
even I were to call this purely theoretical acceptance an 
hypothesis only, which I am entitled to assume, I should 
profess'to be in possession of a more complete concept of 
the nature of a cause of the world, and of another world, 
than I really can produce. If I accept anything, even as 
an hypothesis only, I must know it at least so much ac- 
cording to its properties, that I need not imagine its con- 
cepts, but its existence only. But the word belief refers 
only to the guidance which an idea gives me, and to its 
subjective influence on the conduct of my reason, which 
makes me hold it fast, though I may not be able to give 
an account of it from a speculative point of view. 



664 Canon of Pair Reason 

Purely doctrinal belief, however, has always a somewhat 
unstable character. Speculative difficulties often make 
us lose hold of it, though in the end we always [p. 828] 
return to it. 

It is quite different with moral belief. For here action 
is absolutely aecessary, tint is, I must obey the moral law 
on all points. The end is here firmly established, and, 
according to all we know, one only condition is possible 
under which that end could agree with all other ends, and 
thus acquire practical validity, namely, the existence of a 
God and of a future world. I also know it for certain that 
no one is cognisant of other conditions which could lead 
to the same unity of ends under the moral law. As, then, 
the moral precept is ;it the same time my maxim, reason 
commanding that it should be so, I shall inevitably believe 
in the existence of God, and in a future life, and I feel 
certain that nothing can shake this belief, because all my 
moral principles would be overthrown at the same time, 
and I cannot surrender them without becoming hateful in 
my own eyes. 

We see, therefore, that, even after the failure of all the 
ambitious schemes of reason to pass beyond the limits of 
all experience, enough remains to make us satisfied for 
practical purposes. No one, no doubt, will be able to 
boast again that he knows that there is a God and a future 
life. For a man who knows that, is the very man [p. 829] 
whom I have been so long in search of. As all knowledge, 
if it refers to an object of pure reason, can be communi- 
cated, I might hope that, through his teaching, my own 
knowledge would be increased in the most wonderful way. 
No, that conviction is not a logical, but a mortal certainty ; 
and, as it rests on subjective grounds (of the moral senti- 



Canon of Pure Reason 665 

ment), I must not even say that it is morally certain that 
there is a God, etc., but that / am morally certain, etc. 
What I really mean is, that the belief in a God and in 
another world is so interwoven with my moral sentiment, 
that as there is little danger of my losing the latter, there 
is quite as little fear lest I should ever be deprived of the 
former. 

The only point that may rouse misgivings is that this 
rational belief is based on the supposition of moral senti- 
ments. If we surrender this, and take a man who is en- 
tirely indifferent with regard to moral laws, the question 
proposed by reason becomes merely a problem for specula- 
tion, and may in that case be still supported with strong 
grounds from analogy, but not such to which the most 
obstinate scepticism has to submit. 1 

No man, however, is with regard to these ques- [p. 830] 
tions free from all interest. For although in the absence 
of good sentiments he may be rid of all moral interest, 
enough remains even thus to make him fear the existence 
of God and a future life. For nothing is required for this 
but his inability to plead certainty with regard to the non- 
existence of such a being and of a future life. As this 
would have to be proved by mere reason, and therefore 
apodictically, he would have to establish the impossibility 
of both, which I feel certain no rational being would vent- 
ure to do. This would be a negative belief which, though 

1 The interest which the human mind takes in morality (an interest which, 
as I believe, is necessary to every rational being) is natural, though it is not 
undivided, and always practically preponderant. If you strengthen and in- 
crease that interest, you will find reason very docile, and even more enlight- 
ened, so as to be able to join the speculative with the practical interests. If 
you do not take care that you first make men at least moderately good, you 
will never make them honest believers. 



666 Canon of Pure Reason 

it could not produce morality and good sentiments, would 
still produce something analogous, namely, a check on 
the outbreak of evil. 

But, it will be said, is this really all that pure reason 
can achieve in opening prospects beyond the limits of 
experience? Nothing more than two articles of faith? 
Surely even the ordinary understanding could have 
achieved as much without taking counsel of [p. 831] 
philosophers ! 

I shall not here dwell on the benefits which, by the 
laborious efforts of its criticism, philosophy has conferred 
on human reason, granting even that in the end they 
should turn out to be merely negative. On this point 
something will have to be said in the next section. But 
I ask, do you really require that knowledge, which con- 
cerns all men, should go beyond the common understand- 
ing, and should be revealed to you by philosophers only ? 
The very thing which you find fault with, is the best con- 
firmation of the correctness of our previous assertions, 
since it reveals to us what we could not have grasped 
before, namely, that in matters which concern all men 
without distinction, nature cannot be accused of any 
partial distribution of her gifts ; and that with regard to 
the essential interests of human nature, the highest phi- 
losophy can achieve no more than that guidance which nat- 
ure has vouchsafed even to the meanest understanding. 



METHOD OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 

[p. 832] 

CHAPTER III 

THE ARCHITECTONIC OF PURE REASON 

By architectonic I understand the art of constructing 
systems. As systematical unity is that which raises com- 
mon knowledge to the dignity of a science, that is, changes 
a mere aggregate of knowledge into a system, it is easy 
to see that architectonic is the doctrine of what is really 
scientific in our knowledge, and forms therefore a neces- 
sary part of the doctrine of method. 

Under the sway of reason our knowledge must not 
remain a rhapsody, but must become a system, because 
thus alone can the essential objects of reason be supported 
and advanced. By system I mean the unity of various 
kinds of knowledge under one idea. This is the concept 
given by reason of the form of the whole, in which concept 
both the extent of its manifold contents and the place 
belonging to each part are determined a priori. This 
scientific concept of reason contains, therefore, the end 
and also the form of the whole which is congruent with it. 
The unity of the end to which all parts relate and through 
the idea of which they are related to each other, enables 
us to miss any part, if we possess a knowledge of the rest, 
and prevents any arbitrary addition or vagueness of per- 

667 



668 Architectonic of Pure Reason 

fection of which the limits could not be determined a 
priori. Thus the whole is articulated {ar/icu/a/io), [p. 833] 
not aggregated (coacervatio). It may grow internally {pet 
intussusceptionem), hut not externally (per appositionem), 

like an animal body, the growth of which docs not add 
any new memher, but, without changing their proportion, 
renders each stronger and more efficient for its purposes. 

The idea requires for its realisation a schema, that is 
an essential variety, and an order of its parts, which 
are determined a priori, according to the principles inher- 
ent in its aim. A schema, which is not designed accord- 
ing to an idea, that is, according to the principal aim of 
reason, but empirically only, in accordance with accidental 
aims (the number of which cannot be determined before- 
hand) gives technical unit}- ; but the schema which origi- 
nates from an idea only (where reason dictates the aims 
a priori and does not wait for them in experience) supplies 
architectonical unity. Now what we call a science, the 
schema of which must have its outline {monogramma) and 
the division of the whole into parts devised according to 
the idea, that is, a priori, and keep it perfectly distinct 
from everything else according to principles, cannot be 
produced technically according to the similarity of its 
various parts or the accidental use of knowledge in con- 
creto for this or that external purpose, but architectoni- 
cally only, as based on the affinity of its parts and their 
dependence on one supreme and internal aim through 
which alone the whole becomes possible. [p. 834] 

No one attempts to construct a science unless he can 
base it on some idea ; but in the elaboration of it the 
schema, nay, even the definition, which he gives in the 
beginning of his science, corresponds very seldom to his 



Architectonic of Pure Reason 669 

idea which, like a germ, lies hidden in reason, and all the 
parts of which are still enveloped and hardly distinguish- 
able even under microscopical observation. It is neces- 
sary, therefore, to explain and determine all sciences, 
considering that they are contrived from the point of view 
of a certain general interest, not according to the descrip- 
tion given by their author, but according to the idea which, 
from the natural unity of its constituent parts, we may 
discover as founded in reason itself. We shall often find 
that the originator of a science, and even his latest suc- 
cessors are moving vaguely round an idea which they have 
not been able to perceive clearly, failing in consequence 
to determine rightly the proper contents, the articulation 
(systematical unity), and the limits of their science. 

It is a misfortune that only after having collected for a 
long time at haphazard, under the influence of an idea that 
lies hidden in us, materials belonging to a science, nay, 
after having for a long time fitted them together [p. 835] 
technically, a time arrives when we are able to see its 
idea in a clearer light, and to devise architectonically a 
whole system according to the aims of reason. Systems 
seem to develope like worms through a kind of generatio 
aequivoca, by the mere aggregration of numerous concepts, 
at first imperfect, and gradually attaining to perfection, 
though in reality they all had their schema, as their origi- 
nal germ, in reason which was itself being developed. 
Hence, not only is each of them articulated according to 
an idea, but all may be properly combined with each other 
in a system of human knowledge, as members of one 
whole, admitting of an architectonic of all human know- 
ledge which in our time, when so much material has been 
collected or may be taken over from the ruins of old 



Gjo Architectonic of Pure Reason 

systems, is not only possible, but not even very difficult. 
We shall confine ourselves here to the completion of our 
proper business, namely, to sketch the architectonic of all 
knowledge arising Ixoxapure reason, beginning only at the 
point where the common root of our knowledge divides 

into two stems, one of whieh is reason. By reason, how- 
ever, I understand here the whole higher faculty of know- 
ledge, and I distinguish therein rational from empirical 
knowledg 

If I take no account of the contents of knowledge, ob- 
jectively considered, all knowledge is, from a subjective 
point of view, either historical or rational. His- [p. 836] 
torical knowledge is cognitio ex datiSj rational knowledge 
COgnitio ex principiis. Whatever may be the first origin 
of some branch of knowledge, it is always historical, if he 
who possesses it knows only so much of it as has been 
given to him from outside, whether through immediate 
experience, or through narration, or by instruction also 
(in general knowledge). Hence a person who, in the 
usual sense, has learnt a system of philosophy, for in- 
stance the Wolfian, though he may carry in his head all 
the principles, definitions, and proofs, as well as the divis- 
ion of the whole system, and have it all at his fingers' 
ends, possesses yet none but a complete Jiistorical know- 
ledge of the Wolfian philosophy. His knowledge and 
judgments are no more than what has been given him. 
If you dispute any definition, he does not know whence 
to take another, because he formed his own on the reason 
of another. But the imitative is not the productive fac- 
ulty, that is, knowledge in his case did not come from 
reason, and though objectively it is rational knowledge, 
subjectively it is historical only. He has taken and kept, 



Architectonic of Pure Reason 671 

that is, he has well learned and has become a plaster cast 
of a living man. Knowledge, which is rational objectively 
(that is, which can arise originally from a man's own rea- 
son only), can then only be so called subjectively also, 
when they have been drawn from the general resources 
of reason, that is, from principles from which [p. 837] 
also criticism, nay, even the rejection of what has been 
learnt, may arise. 

All knowledge of reason is again either based on con- 
cepts or on the construction of concepts ; the former 
being called philosophical, the latter mathematical. Of 
their essential difference I have treated in the first chap- 
ter. Knowledge, as we saw, may be objectively philo- 
sophical, and yet subjectively historical, as is the case 
with most apprentices, and with all who never look be- 
yond their school and remain in a state of pupilage all 
their life. But it is strange that mathematical knowledge, 
as soon as it has been acquired, may be considered, sub- 
jectively also, as knowledge of reason, there being no such 
distinction here as in the case of philosophical knowledge. 
The reason is that the sources from which alone the math- 
ematical teacher can take his knowledge lie nowhere but 
in the essential and genuine principles of reason, and can- 
not be taken by the pupil from anywhere else, nor ever be 
disputed, for the simple ground that the employment of 
reason takes place here in concreto only, although a priori, 
namely, in the pure and therefore faultless intuition, thus 
excluding all illusion and error. Of all the sciences of 
reason {a priori), therefore, mathematics alone can be 
learnt, but philosophy (unless it be historically) never ; 
with regard to reason we can at most learn to philosophise. 

The system of all philosophical knowledge [p. 838] 



672 Architectonic of Pure Reason 

is called philosophy. It must be taken objectively, if we 
understand by it the type of criticising all philosophical 
attempts, which is to serve for the criticism of every sub- 
jective philosophy, however various and changeable the 
systems may be. In this manner philosophy is a mere 
idea of a possible science which exists nowhere in Con- 
or to, but which we may try to approach on different 
paths, until in the end the only true path, though over- 
grown and hidden by sensibility, has been discovered, and 
the image, which has so often proved a failure, has become 
as like the original type as human power can ever make it. 
Till then we cannot learn philosophy ; for where is it, 
who possesses it, and how shall we know it ? We can 
only learn to philosophise, that is, to exercise the talent 
of reason, according to its general principles, on certain 
given attempts always, however, with the reservation of 
the right of reason of investigating the sources of these 
principles themselves, and of either accepting or rejecting 
them. 

So far the concept of philosophy is only scholastic, as of 
a system of knowledge which is sought and valued as a 
science, without aiming at more than a systematical unity 
of that knowledge, and therefore the logical perfection of 
it. But there is also a universal, or, if we may say so, a 
cosmical concept {conceptns cosmiens) of philosophy, which 
always formed the real foundation of that name, [p. 839] 
particularly when it had, as it were, to be personified and 
represented in the ideal of the philosopher, as the original 
type. In this sense philosophy is the science of the rela- 
tion of all knowledge to the essential aims of human 
reason {teleologia rationis hnmanae), and the philosopher 
stands before us, not as an artist, but as the lawgiver of 



Architectonic of Pure Reason 6ji 

human reason. In that sense it would be very boastful to 
call oneself a philosopher, and to pretend to have equalled 
the type which exists in the idea only. 

The mathematician, the student of nature, and the 
logician, however far the two former may have advanced 
in rational, and the last, particularly, in philosophical 
knowledge, are merely artists of reason. There is be- 
sides, an ideal teacher, who controls them all, and uses 
them as instruments for the advancement of the essential 
aims of human reason. Him alone we ought to call phi- 
losopher : but as he exists nowhere, while the idea of his 
legislation exists everywhere in the reason of every human 
being, we shall keep entirely to that idea, and determine 
more accurately what kind of systematical unity philoso- 
phy, in this cosmical concept, 1 demands from the stand- 
point of its aims. (p. 840] 

Essential ends are not as yet the highest ends ; in fact, 
there can be but one highest end, if the perfect systemati- 
cal unity of reason has been reached. We must distin- 
guish, therefore, between the ultimate end and subordinate 
ends, which necessarily belong, as means, to the former. 
The former is nothing but the whole destination of man, 
and the philosophy which relates to it is called moral 
philosophy. On account of this excellence which distin- 
guishes moral philosophy from all other operations of 
reason, the ancients always understood under the name of 
philosopher the moralist principally : and even at present 
the external appearance of self-control by means of reason 

1 Cosmical concept is meant here for a concept relating to what must be of 
interest to everybody : while I determine the character of a science, according 
to scholastic concepts, if I look upon it only as one of many crafts intended for 
certain objects. 

2X 



674 Architectonic of Pure Reason 

leads us, through a certain analogy, to call a man a phi- 
losopher, however limited his knowledge may be. The 
legislation of human reason (philosophy) has two objects 
only, nature and freedom, and contains therefore both the 

law of nature and the law of morals, at first in two sepa- 
rate systems, but combined, at last, in one great system 

of philosophy. The philosophy of nature relates to all 
that is; that of morals to that only that ought to be. 

All philosophy is either knowledge derived from pure 
reason, or knowledge «>t reason derived from empirical 
principles. The former is called pure, the latter empirical 
philosophy. 

The philosophy of pure reason is cither pro- ' [p. 841] 
paedeutic (preparation), enquiring into the faculties of rea- 
son, with regard to all pure knowledge a priori, and called 
critic, or, secondly, the system of pure reason (science), 
comprehending in systematical connection the whole (both 
true and illusory,) of philosophical knowledge, derived from 
pure reason, and called mctapJiysic, — although this name 
of metaphysic may be given also to the whole of pure phi- 
losophy, inclusive of the critic, in order thus to compre- 
hend both the investigation of all that can ever be known 
a priori and the representation of all that constitutes a 
system of pure philosophical knowledge of that kind, 
excluding all that belongs to the empirical and the mathe- 
matical employment of reason. 

Metaphysic is divided into that of the speculative and 
that of the practical use of pure reason, and is, therefore, 
either metapliysic of nature or metaphysic of morals. The 
former contains all the pure principles of reason, derived 
from concepts only (excluding therefore mathematics), of 
the theoretical knowledge of all things, the latter, the prin- 



Architectonic of Pure Reason 675 

ciples which determine a priori and necessitate all doing 
and not doing. Morality is the only legality of actions 
that can be derived from principles entirely a priori. 
Hence the metaphysic of morals is really pure moral phi- 
losophy, in which no account is taken of anthropology or 
any empirical conditions. Metaphysic of specu- [p. 842] 
lative reason has commonly been called metaphysic^ in the 
more limited sense ; as however pure moral philosophy 
belongs likewise to this branch of human and philosophi- 
cal knowledge, derived from pure reason, we shall allow it 
to retain that name, although we leave it aside for the 
present as not belonging .to our immediate object. 

It is of the highest importance to isolate various sorts 
of knowledge, which in kind and origin are different from 
others, and to take great care lest they be mixed up with 
those others with which, for practical purposes, they are 
generally united. What is done by the chemist in the 
analysis of substances, and by the mathematician in pure 
mathematics, is far more incumbent on the philosopher, 
in order to enable him to define clearly the part which, 
in the promiscuous employment of the understanding, be- 
longs to a special kind of knowledge, as well as its peculiar 
value and influence. Human reason, therefore, since it 
first began to think, or rather to reflect, has never been 
able to do without a metaphysic, but it has never kept 
it sufficiently free from all foreign admixture. The idea 
of a science of this kind is as old as speculation itself, 
and what human reason does not speculate, whether in a 
scholastic or a popular manner ? It must be admitted, 
however, that even thinkers by profession did [p. 843] 
not clearly distinguish between the two elements of our 
knowledge, the one being in our possession completely a 



676 Architectonic of Pure Reason 

priori, the other deducible a posteriori only from experi- 
ence, and did not succeed therefore in fixing the limits 
of a special kind oi knowledge, nor in realising the true 
idea of a science which had so long and so deeply en- 
sd the interest of human reason. When it was said 
that metaphysic is the science of the first principles of 
human knowledge, this did not mark out any special 
kind of knowledge, hut only a certain rank or degree, 
with regard to its character <>f generality, which was 
net sufficient to distinguish it clearly from empirical 
knowledge. For among empirical principles also, some 
are more general, and therefore higher than others ; and 
in such a series of subordinated principles (where that 
which is entirely a priori is not distinguished from that 
which is known a posteriori only), where should one draw 
the line to separate the first part from the last, and the 
higher members from the lower? What should we say 
if chronology should distinguish the epochs of history 
no better than by dividing it into the first centuries and 
the subsequent centuries ? We should ask, no doubt, 
whether the fifth or the tenth belongs to the first centu- 
ries ? and I ask in the same way whether the concept of 
what is extended belongs to metaphysic ? If you say, 
yes ! I ask, what about the concept of a body ? and of 
a liquid body ? You then hesitate, for you [p. 844] 
begin to see, that if I continue in this strain, every- 
thing would belong to metaphysic. It thus becomes 
clear that the mere degree of subordination of the 
special under the general cannot determine the limits 
of a science ; but, in our case, only the complete differ- 
ence in kind and origin. The fundamental idea of 
metaphysic was obscured on another side because, as 



Architectonic of Pure Reason 677 

knowledge a priori, it showed a certain similarity in kind 
with mathematics. The two are, no doubt, related with 
regard to their origin a priori, but, if we consider how, 
in metaphysic, knowledge is derived from concepts, while 
in mathematics we can only form judgments through the 
construction of concepts a priori, we discover, in com- 
paring philosophical with mathematical knowledge, the 
most decided difference in kind, which was no doubt 
always felt, but never determined by clear criteria. Thus 
it has happened that, as philosophers themselves blun- 
dered in developing the idea of their science, its elabora- 
tion could have no definite aim, and no certain guidance ; 
and we may well understand how metaphysical science 
was brought into contempt in the outside world, and at 
last among philosophers themselves, considering how 
arbitrarily it had been designed, and how constantly 
those very philosophers, ignorant as to the path which 
they ought to take, were disputing among themselves 
about the discoveries which each asserted he had made 
on his own peculiar path. [p. 845] 

All pure knowledge a priori constitutes, therefore, ac- 
cording to the special faculty of knowledge in which alone 
it can originate, a definite unity ; and metaphysic is that 
philosophy which is meant to represent that knowledge 
in its systematical unity. Its speculative part, which 
has especially appropriated that name, namely, what we 
call metaphysic of nature, in which everything is con- 
sidered from concepts a priori, so far as it is (not so far 
as it ought to be), will have to be divided in the following 
manner. 

Metaphysic, in the more limited sense of the word, 
consists of transcendental pJiilosopJiy and the physiology 

/ 



Architectonic of Pure Reason 

of pure reason. The former treats only of understands 
ing and reason themselves, in a system of all concepts 
and principles which have reference to objects in general, 
without taking account of objects that may be given 
(ontologia): the latter treats of nature, that is, the sum 
of given objects (whether given to the senses, or, if you 
like, to some other kind of intuition) and is therefore 
physiology % although rationalis only. The employment 
of reason in this rational study of nature is either physi- 
eal or hyperpbysical, or, more accurately speaking, /;//- 
manent or transcendent. The former refers to nature, 
in so far as its knowledge can take place in experience 

(in COncreto) ; the latter to that connection of objects of 
experience which transcends all experience. This tran- 
scendent physiology has for its object either an [p. 846] 
internal or an external connection, both transcending 

every possible experience ; the former is the physiology 
of nature as a whole, or transcendental knowledge of the 
world, the latter refers to the connection of the whole 
of nature with a Being above nature, and is therefore 
transcendental knowledge of God. 

Immanent physiology, on the contrary, considers nature 
as the sum total of all objects of the senses, such, there- 
fore, as it is given us, but only according to conditions 
a priori, under which alone it can be given us. It has 
two kinds of objects only ; first, those of the external 
senses, which constitute together corporeal nature ; sec- 
ondly, the object of the internal sense, the soul, and 
what, according to its fundamental principles in general, 
may be called thinking nature. The metaphysic of cor- 
poreal nature is called physic, or, because it must contain 
the principles of an a priori knowledge of nature only, 



Architectonic of Pure Reason 679 

rational physic. Metaphysic of the thinking nature is 
called psychology, and for the same reason, is here to be 
understood as the rational knowledge only of that nature. 

Thus the whole system of metaphysic consists of four 
principal parts. I. Ontology, 2. Rational Physiology, 
3. Rational Cosmology, 4. Rational Theology. The second 
part, the physiology of pure reason, contains two divisions, 
namely, physica rationalis} and phychologia [p. 847] 
rationalis. 

The fundamental idea of a philosophy of pure reason pre- 
scribes itself this division. It is therefore architectonical, 
adequate to its essential aims, and not technical only, con- 
trived according to any observed similarities, and, as it 
were, at haphazard. For that very reason such a division 
is unchangeable and of legislative authority. There are, 
however, a few points which might cause misgivings, and 
weaken our conviction of its legitimate character. 

First of all, how can I expect knowledge a priori, that 
is metaphysic, of objects so far as they are given to our 
senses, that is a posteriori? and how is it possible to 
know the nature of things according to principles a priori, 
and thus to arrive at a rational physiology ? Our [p. 848] 
answer is, that we take nothing from experience beyond 
what is necessary to give us an object, either of the exter- 

1 It must not be supposed that I mean by this what is commonly called 
physica generalis, and which is rather mathematics, than a philosophy of 
nature. For the metaphysic of nature is entirely separate from mathematics, 
and does not enlarge our knowledge as much as mathematics; but it is, never- 
theless, very important, as supplying a criticism of the pure knowledge of the 
understanding that should be applied to nature. For want of its guidance, 
even mathematicians, given to certain common concepts which in reality are 
metaphysical, have unconsciously encumbered physical science with hypotheses 
which vanish under a criticism of those principles, without however causing 
the least detriment to the necessary employment of mathematics in this field. 



6So Architectonic of Pure Reason 

nal or of the internal sense. The former is done by the 
mere concept of matter (impermeable, lifeless extension), 
the latter through the concept of a thinking being (in the 
empirical internal representation, I think). For the rest, 
wo ought in the whole metaphysical treatment of these ob- 
jects to abstain from all empirical principles, which to the 
concept of matter might add any kind of experience for 
the purpose of forming any judgments on these objects. 

Secondly. What becomes of empirical psychology % which 
has always maintained its place in metaphysic and from 
which, in our time, such great things were expected for 
throwing light on metaphysic, after all hope had been 
surrendered of achieving anything useful a priori ? I 
answer, it has its place where the proper (empirical) study 
of nature must be placed, namely, by the side of applied 
philosophy, to which pure philosophy supplies the principles 
a priori ; thus being connected, but not to be confounded 
with it. Empirical psychology, therefore, must be entirely 
banished from metaphysic, and is excluded from it by its 
very idea. According to the tradition of the schools, how- 
ever, we shall probably have to allow to it (though as an ep- 
isode only) a small corner in metaphysic, and this [p. 849] 
from economical motives, because, as yet, it is not so rich 
as to constitute a study by itself, and yet too important 
to be banished entirely and to be settled in a place where it 
would find still less affinity than in metaphysic. It is, 
therefore, a stranger only, who has been received for a long 
time and whom one allows to stay a little longer, until he 
can take up his own abode in a complete system of anthro- 
pology, the pendant to the empirical doctrine of nature. 

This then is the general idea of metaphysic which, as 
in the beginning more was expected of it than could justly 



Architectonic of Pure Reason 68 1 

be demanded, fell into general disrepute after these pleas- 
ant expectations had proved fallacious. The whole course 
of our critique must have convinced us sufficiently that, 
although metaphysic cannot supply the foundation of 
religion, it must always remain its bulwark, and that 
human reason, being dialectical by its very nature, cannot 
do without a science which curbs it and, by means of a sci- 
entific and perfectly clear self-knowledge, prevents the rav- 
ages which otherwise this lawless speculative reason would 
certainly commit both in morals and religion. We may 
be sure, therefore, that, in spite of the coy or contemptu- 
ous airs assumed by those who judge a science, not accord- 
ing to its nature, but according to its accidental [p. 850] 
effects, we shall always return to it as to a beloved one 
with whom we have quarrelled, because reason, as essential 
interests are here at stake, cannot rest till it has either 
established correct views or destroyed those which already 
exist. 

Metaphysic, therefore, that of nature as well as that of 
morals, and particularly the criticism of our adventurous 
reason, which forms the introduction and preparation of 
it, constitute together what may be termed philosophy 
in the true sense of the word. Its only goal is wisdom, 
and the path to it science, the only path which, if once 
opened, is never grown over again, and can never mis- 
lead. Mathematics, natural science, even the empirical 
knowledge of men, have, no doubt, a high value, as means 
for the most part to accidental, but yet in the end neces- 
sary and essential aims of mankind. But they have that 
value only by means of that knowledge of reason based on 
pure concepts which, call it as you may, is in reality 
nothing but metaphysic. 



682 Architectonic of Pure Reason 

For the same reason metaphysic is also the completion 
of the whole culture of human reason, which is indispen- 
sable, although one may discard its influence as a science 
with regard to certain objects. For it enquires [p. 851] 
into reason according to its elements and highest maxims, 
which must form the very foundation of the possibility of 
some sciences, and of the use of all. That, as mere spec- 
ulation, it serves rather to keep off error than to extend 
knowledge does not detract from its value, but, on the 
contrary, confers upon it dignity and authority by that 
censorship which secures general order and harmony, ay, 
the well-being of the scientific commonwealth, and pre- 
vents its persevering and successful labourers from losing 
sight of the highest aim, the general happiness of all 
mankind. 






METHOD OF TRANSCENDENTALISM 

[p. S52] 

CHAPTER IV 

THE HISTORY OF PURE REASON 

This title stands here only in order to indicate the 
place in the system which remains empty for the present 
and has to be filled hereafter. I content myself with 
casting a cursory glance, from a purely transcendental 
point of view, namely, that of the nature of pure reason, 
on the labours of former philosophers, which presents to 
my eyes many structures, but in ruins only. 

It is very remarkable, though naturally it could not well 
have been otherwise, that in the very infancy of philoso. 
phy men began where we should like to end, namely, with 
studying the knowledge of God and the hope or even the 
nature of a future world. However crude the religious 
concepts might be which owed their origin to the old cus- 
toms, as remnants of the savage state of humanity, this 
did not prevent the more enlightened classes from devot- 
ing themselves to free investigations of these matters, and 
they soon perceived that there could be no better and 
surer way of pleasing that invisible power which governs 
the world, in order to be happy at least in another world, 
than good conduct. Thus theology and morals [p. 853] 
became the two springs, or rather the points of attraction 
for all abstract enquiries of reason in later times, though 

683 



684 History of Pure Reason 

it was chiefly the former which gradually drew speculative 
reason into those labours which afterwards became so 
celebrated under the name of metaphysic. 

I shall not attempt at present to distinguish the periods 
of history in which this or that change of metaphysic took 
place, but only draw a rapid sketch of the difference of 
the ideas which caused the principal revolutions in meta- 
physic. And here I find three aims with which the most 
important changes on this arena were brought about. 

1. With reference to the object of all knowledge of our 
reason, some philosophers were mere sensualists, others 
mere intellectualists. Epicurus may be regarded as the 
first among the former, Plato as the first among the latter. 
The distinction of these two schools, subtle as it is, dates 
from the earliest days, and has long been maintained. 
Those who belong to the former school maintained that 
reality exists in the objects of the senses alone, everything 
else being imagination ; those of the second school, on the 
contrary, maintained, that in the senses there is nothing 
but illusion, and that the true is known by the [p. 854] 
understanding only. The former did not, therefore, deny 
all reality to the concepts of the understanding, but that 
reality was with them logical only, with the others it was 
mystical. The former admitted intellectual concepts, but 
accepted sensible objects only. The latter required that 
true objects should be intelligible only, and maintained an 
intuition peculiar to the understanding, separated from the 
senses which, in tl\eir opinion, could only confuse it. 

2. With reference to tJie origin of the pure concepts of 
reason, and whether they are derived from experience, or 
have their origin independent of experience, in reason. 
Aristotle may be considered as the head of the empiricists, 






History of Pure Reason 685 

Plato as that of the noologists. Locke, who in modern 
times followed Aristotle, and Leibniz, who followed Plato 
(though at a sufficient distance from his mystical system), 
have not been able to bring this dispute to any conclusion. 
Epicurus at least was far more consistent in his sensual 
system (for he never allowed his syllogisms to go beyond 
the limits of experience) than Aristotle and Locke, more 
particularly the latter, who, after having derived all con- 
cepts and principles from experience, goes so far in their 
application as to maintain that the existence of God and 
the immortality of the soul (though both lie entirely out- 
side the limits of all possible experience) could [p. 855] 
be proved with the same evidence as any mathematical 
proposition. 

3. With reference to method. If anything is to be called 
method, it must be a procedure according to principles. 
The method at present prevailing in this field of enquiry 
may be divided into the naturalistic and the scientific. 
The naturalist of pure reason lays it down as his principle 
that, with reference to the highest questions which form 
the problems of metaphysic, more can be achieved by 
means of common reason without science (which he calls 
sound reason), than through speculation. This is the 
same as if we should maintain that the magnitude and 
distance of the moon can be better determined by the 
naked eye than by roundabout mathematical calculations. 
This is pure misology reduced to principles, and, what is 
the most absurd, the neglect of all artificial means is 
recommended as the best way of enlarging our knowledge. 
As regards those who are naturalists because they know 
no better, they are really not to be blamed. They simply 
follow ordinary reason, but they do not boast of their 



686 History of Pure Reason 

ignorance, as the method which contains the secret how 
we are to fetch the truth from the bottom of the well of 
Democritus. 'Quod sapio satis est milii, non ego euro, esse 
quod Arcesilas aerumnosique So/ones' (Pers.), is the motto 
with which they may lead a happy and honoured life, with- 
out meddling with science or muddling it. [p. 856] 

As regards those who follow a scientific method, they 
have the choice to proceed either dogmatically or scepti- 
cally, but at all events, systematically. When I have 
mentioned in relation to the former the celebrated Wolf, 
and in relation to the other David Hume, I may for my 
present purpose leave all the rest unnamed. 

The only path that is still open is the critical. If the 
reader has been kind and patient enough to follow me to 
the end along this path, he may judge for himself whether, 
if he will help, as far as in him lies, towards making this 
footpath a highroad, it may not be possible to achieve, 
even before the close of the present century, what so 
many centuries have not been able to achieve, namely, 
to give complete satisfaction to human reason with regard 
to those questions which have in all ages exercised its 
desire for knowledge, though hitherto in vain. 



SUPPLEMENT I 



MOTTO TO SECOND EDITION 

Baco de Verulamio 

' Instauratio magna: Praefatio 

De nobis ipsis silemus : de re autem, quae agitur, petimus, ut 
homines earn non opinionem, sed opus esse cogitent ; ac pro 
certo habeant, non sectae nos alicujus aut placiti, sed utilitatis et 
amplitudinis humanae fundamenta moliri. Deinde ut suis com- 
modis aequi ... in commune consulant, . . . et ipsi in partem 
veniant. Praeterea, ut bene sperent, neque Instaurationem nos- 
tram ut quiddam infinitum et ultra mortale fingant, et animo con- 
cipiant ; quum revera sit infiniti erroris finis et terminus legitimus. 

687 



SUPPLEMENT II 



Preface to the Second Edition. 1787. [p. vii] 

Whether the treatment of that class of knowledge with which 
reason is occupied follows the secure method of a science or not, 
can easily be determined by the result. If, after repeated prep- 
arations, it comes to a standstill, as soon as its real goal is ap- 
proached, or is obliged, in order to reach it, to retrace its steps 
again and again, and strike into fresh paths ; again, if it is impos- 
sible to produce unanimity among those who are engaged in the 
same work, as to the manner in which their common object 
should be obtained, we may be convinced that such a study is far 
from having attained to the secure method of a science, but is 
groping only in the dark. In that case we are conferring a great 
benefit on reason, if we only find out the right method, though 
many things should have to be surrendered as useless, which were 
comprehended in the original aim that had been chosen without 
sufficient reflection. 

That Logic, from the earliest times, has followed that [p. viii] 
secure method, may be seen from the fact that since Aristotle it 
has not had to retrace a single step, unless we choose to consider 
as improvements the removal of some unnecessary subtleties, or 
the clearer definition of its matter, both of which refer to the 
elegance rather than to the solidity of the science. It is remark- 
able also, that to the present day, it has not been able to make 
one step in advance, so that, to all appearance, it may be con- 
sidered as completed and perfect. If some modern philosophers 
thought to enlarge it, by introducing psychological chapters on the 
different faculties of knowledge (faculty of imagination, wit, etc.), 
or metaphysical chapters on the origin of knowledge, or the dif- 

688 






Supplement II 689 

ferent degrees of certainty according to the difference of objects 
(idealism, scepticism, etc.), or lastly, anthropological chapters on 
prejudices, their causes and remedies, this could only arise from 
their ignorance of the peculiar nature of logical science. We do 
not enlarge, but we only disfigure the sciences, if we allow their 
respective limits to be confounded : and the limits of logic are 
definitely fixed by the fact, that it is a science which has nothing 
to do but fully to exhibit and strictly to prove all formal [p. ix] 
rules of thought (whether it be a priori or empirical, whatever be 
its origin or its object, and whatever be the impediments, acci- 
dental or natural, which it has to encounter in the human mind) . 

That logic should in this respect have been so successful, is due 
entirely to its limitation, whereby it has not only the right, but the 
duty, to make abstraction of all the objects- of knowledge and 
their differences, so that the understanding has to deal with 
nothing beyond itself and its own forms. It was, of course, far 
more difficult for reason to enter on the secure method of science, 
when it has to deal not with itself only, but also with objects. 
Logic, therefore, as a kind of preparation (propaedeutic} forms, as 
it were, the vestibule of the sciences only, and where real know- 
ledge is concerned, is presupposed for critical purposes only, while 
the acquisition of knowledge must be sought for in the sciences 
themselves, properly and objectively so called. 

If there is to be in those sciences an element of reason, some- 
thing in them must be known a prio?i, and knowledge may stand 
in a twofold relation to its object, by either simply deter- [p. x] 
mining it and its concept (which must be supplied from else- 
where), or by making it real also. The former is theoretical, the 
latter practical knowledge of reason. In both the pure part, 
namely, that in which reason determines its object entirely a 
priori (whether it contain much or little), must be treated first, 
without mixing up with it what comes from other sources ; for it is 
bad economy to spend blindly whatever comes in, and not to be able 
to determine, when there is a stoppage, which part of the income 
can bear the expenditure, and where reductions must be made. 

Mathematics and physics are the two theoretical sciences of 
reason, which have to determine their objects a priori; the 
2 Y 



690 Supplement II 

former quite purely, the latter partially so, and partially from other 
sources of knowledge besides reason. 

Mathematics, from the earliest times to which the history of 
human reason can reach, has followed, among that wonderful peo- 
ple of the Greeks, the safe way of a science. But it must not be 
supposed that it was as easy for mathematics as for logic, in 
which reason is concerned with itself alone, to find, or rather to 
make for itself that royal road. 1 believe, on the contrary, 

that there was a long period of tentative work (chiefly [p. xi] 
still among the Egyptians), and that the change is to be as- 
cribed to a revolution y produced by the happy thought of a 
single man, whose experiment pointed unmistakably to the path 
that had to be followed, and opened and traced out for the 
most distant times the safe way of a science. The history of 
licit intellectual revolution, which was far more important than 
the discovery of the passage round the celebrated Cape of Good 
Hope, and the name of its fortunate author, have not been pre- 
served to us. But the story preserved by Diogenes Laertius, who 
names the reputed author of the smallest elements of ordinary 
geometrical demonstration, even of such as, according to general 
opinion, do not require to be proved, shows, at all events, that the 
memory of the revolution, produced by the very first traces of 
the discovery of a new method, appeared extremely important to 
the mathematicians, and thus remained unforgotten. A new light 
flashed on the first man who demonstrated the properties of the 
isosceles triangle 1 (whether his name was TJiales or any other 
name), for he found that he had not to investigate what [p. xii] 
he saw in the figure, or the mere concept of that figure, and thus 
to learn its properties ; but that he had to produce (by construc- 
tion) what he had himself, according to concepts a prio?'i, placed 
into that figure and represented in it, so that, in order to know 
anything with certainty a priori, he must not attribute to that 

1 Kant himself in a letter to Schiitz (Darstellung seines Lebens von seinem 
Sohn, Halle, 1835, Band. II. S. 208) pointed out the mistake which appears 
in the preface to the 2nd edition, namely, gleichseitig (equilateral), instead of 
gleichschenkelig (isosceles) . 



Supplement II 691 

figure anything beyond what necessarily follows from what he has 
himself placed into it, in accordance with the concept. 

It took a much longer time before physics entered on the high 
way of science : for no more than a century and a half has elapsed, 
since Bacon's ingenious proposal partly initiated that discovery, 
partly, as others were already on the right track, gave a new 
impetus to it, — a discovery which, like the former, can only be 
explained by a rapid intellectual revolution. In what I have to 
say, I shall confine myself to natural science, so far as it is founded 
on empirical principles. 

When Galilei let balls of a particular weight, which he had 
determined himself, roll down an inclined plain, or Torricelli 
made the air carry a weight, which he had previously determined 
to be equal to that of a definite volume of water; or when, in 
later times, Stahl 1 changed metal into lime, and lime again into 
metals, by withdrawing and restoring something, a new [p. xiii] 
light flashed on all students of nature. They comprehended that 
reason has insight into that only, which she herself produces on 
her own plan, and that she must move forward with the principles 
of her judgments, according to fixed law, and compel nature to 
answer her questions, but not let herself be led by nature, as it 
were in leading strings, because otherwise accidental observations, 
made on no previously fixed plan, will never converge towards a 
necessary law, which is the only thing that reason seeks and 
requires. Reason, holding in one hand its principles, according 
to which concordant phenomena alone can be admitted as laws 
of nature, and in the other hand the experiment, which it has 
devised according to those principles, must approach nature, in 
order to be taught by it : but not in the character of a pupil, who 
agrees to everything the master likes, but as an appointed judge, 
who compels the witnesses to answer the questions which he 
himself proposes. Therefore even the science of physics entirely 
owes the beneficial revolution in its character to the happy 
thought, that we ought to seek in nature (and not [p. xiv] 

1 I am not closely following here the course of the history of the experimental 
method, nor are the first beginnings of it very well known. 



692 Supplement II 

import into it by means of fiction) whatever reason must learn 
from nature, and could not know by itself, and that we must 
do this in accordance with what reason itself has originally 
placed into nature. Thus only has the study of nature entered 
on the secure method of a science, after having for many centuries 
done nothing but grope in the dark. 

Metaphysic, a completely isolated and speculative science of 
reason, which declines all teaching of experience, and rests on 
concepts only (not on their application to intuition, as mathe- 
matics), in which reason therefore is meant to be her own pupil, 
has hitherto not been so fortunate as to enter on the secure path 
of a science, although it is older than all other sciences, and 
would remain, even if all the rest were swallowed up in the abyss 
of an all-destroying barbarism. In metaphysic, reason, even if it 
tries only to understand a priori (as it pretends to do) those laws 
which are confirmed by the commonest experience, is constantly 
brought to a standstill, and we are obliged again and again to re- 
trace our steps, because they do not lead us where we want to go ; 
while as to any unanimity among those who are engaged [p. xv] 
in the same work, there is so little of it in metaphysic, that it has 
rather become an arena, specially destined, it would seem, for 
those who wish to exercise themselves in mock fights, and where no 
combatant has, as yet, succeeded in gaining an inch of ground that 
he could call permanently his own. It cannot be denied, therefore, 
that the method of metaphysic has hitherto consisted in groping 
only, and, what is the worst, in groping among mere concepts. 

^Yhat then can be the cause that hitherto no secure method of 
science has been discovered? Shall we say that it is impossible? 
Then why should nature have visited our reason with restless 
aspiration to look for it, as if it were its most important concern ? 
Nay more, how little should we be justified in trusting our reason 
if, with regard to one of the most important objects we wish to 
know, it not only abandons us, but lures us on by vain hopes, and 
in the end betrays us ! Or, if hitherto we have only failed to 
meet with the right path, what indications are there to make us 
hope that, if we renew our researches, we shall be more successful 
than others before us ? 



Supplement II 693 

The examples of mathematics and natural science, which by 
one revolution have become what they now are, seem [p. xvi] 
to me sufficiently remarkable to induce us to consider, what may 
have been the essential element in that intellectual revolution 
which has proved so beneficial to them, and to make the experi- 
ment, at least, so far as the analogy between them, as sciences of 
reason, with metaphysic allows it, of imitating them. Hitherto it 
has been supposed that all our knowledge must conform to the 
objects : but, under that supposition, all attempts to establish 
anything about them a priori, by means of concepts, and thus to 
enlarge our knowledge, have come to nothing. The experiment 
therefore ought to be made, whether we should not succeed better 
with the problems of metaphysic, by assuming that the objects 
must conform to our mode of cognition, for this would better 
agree with the demanded possibility of an a priori knowledge of 
them, which is to settle something about objects, before they are 
given us. We have here the same case as with the first thought 
of Copernicus, who, not being able to get on in the explanation 
of the movements of the heavenly bodies, as long as he 'assumed 
that all the stars turned round the spectator, tried, whether he 
could not succeed better, by assuming the spectator to be turning 
round, and the stars to be at rest. A similar experiment may be 
tried in metaphysic, so far as the intuition of objects is [p. xvii] 
concerned. If the intuition had to conform to the constitution of 
objects, I do not see how we could know anything of it a priori ; 
but if the object (as an object of the senses) conforms to the 
constitution of our faculty of intuition, I can very well conceive 
such a possibility. As, however, I cannot rest in these intuitions, 
if they are to become knowledge, but have to refer them, as repre- 
sentations, to something as their object, and must determine that 
object by them, I have the choice of admitting, either that the 
concepts, by which I carry out that determination, conform to the 
object, being then again in the same perplexity on account of 
the manner how I can know anything about it a priori ; or that 
the objects, or what is the same, the experience in which alone 
they are known (as given objects), must conform to those con- 
cepts. In the latter case, the solution becomes more easy, 



694 Supplement II 

because experience, as a kind of knowledge, requires under- 
standing, and I must therefore, even before objects are given to 
me, presuppose the rules of the understanding as existing within 
me a priori, these rules being expressed in concepts a priori, to 
which all objects of experience must necessarily conform, and 
with which they must agree. With regard to objects, [p. xviii] 
so far as they are conceived by reason only, and conceived as 
necessary, and which can never be given in experience, at least 
in that form in which they are conceived by reason, we shall find 
that the attempts at conceiving them (for they must admit of 
being conceived) will furnish afterwards an excellent test of our 
new method of thought, according to which we do not know of 
things anything a priori except what we ourselves put into 
them. 1 ' 

This experiment succeeds as well as we could desire, and 
promises to metaphysic, in its first part, which deals with con- 
cepts a priori, of which the corresponding objects may be given 
in experience, the secure method of a science. For by [p. xix] 
thus changing our point of view, the possibility of knowledge 
a priori can well be explained, and, what is still more, the laws 
which a priori lie at the foundation of nature, as the sum total 
of the objects of experience, may be supplied with satisfactory 
proofs, neither of which was possible with the procedure hitherto 

1 This method, borrowed from the student of nature, consists in our looking 
for the elements of pure reason in that which can be confirmed or refuted by 
experiment. Now it is impossible, in order to test the propositions of pure 
reason, particularly if they venture beyond all the limits of possible experience, 
to make any experiment with their objects (as in natural science) ; we can 
therefore only try with concepts and propositions which we admit a priori, by 
so contriving that the same objects may be considered on one side as objects 
of the senses and of the understanding in experience, and, on the other, as 
objects which are only thought, intended, it may be, for the isolated reason 
which strives to go beyond all the limits of experience. This gives us two 
different sides to be looked at; and if we find that, by looking on things from 
that twofold point of view, there is an agreement with the principle of pure 
reason, while by admitting one point of view only, there arises an inevitable 
conflict with reason, then the experiment decides in favour of the correctness 
of that distinction. 



Supplement II 695 

adopted. But there arises from this deduction of our faculty of 
knowing a priori, as given in the first part of metaphysic, a some- 
what startling result, apparently most detrimental to the objects 
of metaphysic that have to be treated in the second part, namely, 
the impossibility of going with it beyond the frontier of possible 
experience, which is precisely the most essential purpose [p. xx] 
of metaphysical science. But here we have exactly the experi- 
ment which, by disproving the opposite, establishes the truth of 
our first estimate of the knowledge of reason a priori, namely, 
that it can refer to phenomena only, but must leave the thing 
by itself as unknown to us, though as existing by itself. For that 
which impels us by necessity to go beyond the limits of experience 
and of all phenomena, is the unconditioned, which reason postu- 
lates in all things by themselves, by necessity and by right, for 
everything conditioned, so that the series of conditions should 
thus become complete. If then we find that, under the supposi- 
tion of our experience conforming to the objects as things by 
themselves, it is impossible to conceive the unconditioned without 
contradiction, while, under the supposition of our repre'sentation 
of things, as they are given to us, not conforming to them as 
things by themselves, but, on the contrary, of the objects con- 
forming to our mode of representation, that contradiction van- 
ishes, and that therefore the unconditioned must not be looked 
for in things, so far as we know them (so far as they are given 
to us), but only so far as we do not know them (as things by 
themselves), we clearly perceive that, what we at first assumed 
tentatively only, is fully confirmed. 1 But, after all [p. xxi] 
progress in the field of the supersensuous has thus been denied 

1 This experiment of pure reason has a great similarity with that of the chem- 
ists, which they sometimes call the experiment of reduction, or the synthetical 
process in general. The analysis of the metaphysician divided pure know- 
ledge a priori into two very heterogeneous elements, namely, the knowledge 
of things as phenomena and of things by themselves. Dialectic combines 
these two again, to bring them into harmony with the necessary idea of the 
unconditioned, demanded by reason, and then finds that this harmony can 
never be obtained, except through the above distinction, which therefore must 
be supposed to be true. 



696 Supplement II 

to speculative reason, it is still open to us to see, whether in the 
practical knowledge of reason data may not be found which 
enable us to determine that transcendent concept of the uncon- 
ditioned which is demanded by reason, in order thus, according 
to the wish of metaphysic, to get beyond the limits of all possible 
experience, by means of our knowledge a priori, which is possible 
to us for practical purposes only. In this case, speculative reason 
has at least gained for us room for such an extension of know- 
ledge, though it had to leave it empty, so that we are not only 
at liberty, but are really called upon to fill it up, if we are able, 
by practical data of reason. 1 [p. xxii] 

The very object of the critique of pure speculative reason 
consists in this attempt at changing the old procedure of meta- 
physic, and imparting to it the secure method of a science, after 
having completely revolutionised it, following the example of 
geometry and physical science. That critique is a treatise on 
the method ( Traits de la methode), not a system of the science 
itself; but it marks out nevertheless the whole plan of that 
science, both with regard to its limits, and to its internal organi- 
sation. For pure speculative reason has this peculiar [p. xxiii] 
advantage that it is able, nay, bound to measure its own powers, 
according to the different ways in which it chooses its own objects, 
and to completely enumerate the different ways of choosing prob- 
lems ; thus tracing a complete outline of a system of metaphysic. 



1 In the same manner the laws of gravity, determining the movements of 
the heavenly bodies, imparted the character of established certainty to what 
Copernicus had assumed at first as an hypothesis only, and proved at the same 
time the invisible force (the Newtonian attraction) which holds the universe 
together, which would have remained for ever undiscovered, if Copernicus had 
not dared, by an hypothesis, 'which, though contradicting the senses, was yet 
true, to seek the observed movements, not in the heavenly bodies, but in the 
spectator. I also propose in this preface my own view of metaphysics, which 
has so many analogies with the Copernican hypothesis, as an hypothesis only, 
though, in the Critique itself, it is proved by means of our representations of 
space and time, and the elementary concepts of the understanding, not hypo- 
thetically, but apodictically; for I wish that people should observe the first 
attempts at such a change, which must always be hypothetical. 



Supplement II 697 

This is due to the fact that, with regard to the first point, nothing 
can be attributed to objects in knowledge a priori, except what 
the thinking subject takes from within itself; while, with regard 
to the second point, reason, so far as its principles of cognition 
are concerned, forms a separate and independent unity, in which, 
as in an organic body, every member exists for the sake of all 
others, and all others exist for the sake of the one, so that no 
principle can be safely applied in one relation, unless it has been 
carefully examined in all its relations, to the whole employment 
of pure reason. Hence, too, metaphysic has this singular advan- 
tage, an advantage which cannot be shared by any other science, 
in which reason has to deal with objects (for Logic deals only 
with the form of thought in general) that, if it has once attained, 
by means of this critique, to the secure method of a science, it 
can completely comprehend the whole field of know- [p. xxiv] 
ledge pertaining to it, and thus finish its work and leave it to 
posterity, as a capital that can never be added to, because it 
has only to deal with principles and the limits of their employ- 
ment, which are fixed by those principles themselves. And this 
completeness becomes indeed an obligation, if it is to be a 
fundamental science, of which we must be able to say, ' nil actum 
reputans, si quid superesset agendum? 

But it will be asked, what kind of treasure is it which we mean 
to bequeath to posterity in this metaphysic of ours, after it has 
been purified by criticism, and thereby brought to a permanent 
condition ? After a superficial view of this work, it may seem that 
its advantage is negative only, warning us against venturing with 
speculative reason beyond the limits of experience. Such is no 
doubt its primary use : but it becomes positive, when we perceive 
that the principles with which speculative reason ventures beyond 
its limits, lead inevitably, not to an extension, but, if carefully con- 
sidered, to a narrowing of the employment of reason, because, by 
indefinitely extending the limits of sensibility, to which [p. xw ] 
they properly belong, they threaten entirely to supplant the pure 
(practical) employment of reason. Hence our critique, by limit- 
ing sensibility to its proper sphere, is no doubt negative ; but by 
thus removing an impediment, which threatened to narrow, or 



698 Supplement II 

even entirely to destroy its practical employment, it is in reality 
of positive, and of very important use, if only we are convinced 
that there is an absolutely necessary practical use of pure reason 
(the moral use), in which reason must inevitably go beyond the 
limits of sensibility, and though not requiring for this purpose the 
ass i stan c e o( speculative reason, must at all events be assured 
against its opposition, lest it be brought in conflict with itself. 
To deny that this service, which is rendered by eritieism, is a 
positive advantage, would be the same as to deny that the police 
confers upon us any positive advantage, its principal occupation 
being to prevent violence, which citizens have to apprehend from 
citizens, so that each may pursue his vocation in peace and secu- 
rity. We had established in the analytical part of our critique the 
following points: — First, that space and time are only forms of 
sensuous intuition, therefore conditions of the existence of things, 
as phenomena only ; Secondly, that we have no concepts of the 
understanding, and therefore nothing whereby we can arrive at 
the knowledge of things, except in so far as an intuition [p. xxvi] 
corresponding to these concepts can be given, and consequently 
that we cannot have knowledge of any object, as a thing by itself, 
but only in so far as it is an object of sensuous intuition, that is, a 
phenomenon. This proves no doubt that all speculative know- 
ledge of reason is limited to objects of experience ; but it should 
be carefully borne in mind, that this leaves it perfectly open to us, 
to think the same objects as things by themselves, though we can- 
not know them. 1 For otherwise we should arrive at the absurd 
conclusion, that there is phenomenal appearance with- [p. xxvii] 

1 In order to know an object, I must be able to prove its possibility, either 
from its reality, as attested by experience, or a priori by means of reason. 
But I can think whatever I please, provided only I do not contradict my- 
self, that is, provided my conception is a possible thought, though I may 
be unable to answer for the existence of a corresponding object in the sum 
total of all possibilities. Before I can attribute to such a concept objective 
reality (real possibility, as distinguished from the former, which is purely logi- 
cal), something more is required. This something more, however, need not 
be sought for in the sources of theoretical knowledge, for it may be found in 
those of practical knowledge also. 



Supplement II 699 

out something that appears. Let us suppose that the necessary 
distinction, established in our critique, between things as objects 
of experience and the same things by themselves, had not been 
made. In that case, the principle of causality, and with it the 
mechanism of nature, as determined by it, would apply to all 
things in general, as efficient causes. I should then not be able 
to say of one and the same being, for instance the human soul, 
that its will is free, and, at the same time, subject to the necessity 
of nature, that is, not free, without involving myself in a palpable 
contradiction : and this because I had taken the soul, in both prop- 
ositions, in one and the same sense, namely, as a thing in general 
(as something by itself), as, without previous criticism, I could 
not but take it. If, however, our criticism was true, in teaching 
us to take an object in two senses, namely, either as a phenom- 
enon, or as a thing by itself, and if the deduction of our concepts 
of the understanding was correct, and the principle of causality 
applies to things only, if taken in the first sense, namely, so far as 
they are objects of experience, but not to things, if taken in their 
second sense, we can, without any contradiction, think the same 
will when phenomenal (in visible actions) as necessarily [p. xxviii] 
conforming to the law of nature, and so far, not free, and yet, on 
the other hand, when belonging to a thing by itself, as not subject 
to that law of nature, and therefore free. Now it is quite true 
that I may not know my soul, as a thing by itself, by means of 
speculative reason (still less through empirical observation), and 
consequently may not know freedom either, as the quality of a be- 
ing to which I attribute effects in the world of sense, because, in 
order to do this, I should have to know such a being as determined 
in its existence, and yet as not determined in time (which, as I 
cannot provide my concept with any intuition, is impossible). 
This, however, does not prevent me from thinking freedom ; that 
is, my representation of it contains at least no contradiction 
within itself, if only our critical distinction of the two modes of 
representation (the sensible and the intelligible), and the conse- 
quent limitation of the concepts of the pure understanding, and of 
the principles based on them, has been properly carried out. If, 
then, morality necessarily presupposed freedom (in the strictest 



700 Supplement II 

sense) as a property of our will, producing, as a priori data of it, 
practical principles, belonging originally to our reason, which, with- 
out freedom, would be absolutely impossible, while speculative 
reason had proved that such a freedom cannot even [p. xxix] 
be thought, the former supposition, namely, the moral one, would 
necessarily have to yield to another, the opposite of which in- 
volves a palpable contradiction, so that freedom, and with it 
morality (for its opposite contains no contradiction, unless free- 
dom is presupposed), would have to make room for the mechan- 
ism of nature. Now, however, as morality requires nothing but 
that freedom should only not contradict itself, and that, though 
unable to understand, we should at least be able to think it, there 
being no reason why freedom should interfere with the natural 
mechanism of the same act (if only taken in a different sense), 
the doctrine of morality may well hold its place, and the doctrine 
of nature may hold its place too, which would have been impossi- 
ble, if our critique had not previously taught us our inevitable 
ignorance with regard to things by themselves, and limited every- 
thing, which we are able to know theoretically, to mere phenom- 
ena. The same discussion as to the positive advantage to be 
derived from the critical principles of pure reason might be re- 
peated with regard to the concept of God, and of the si?nple nature 
of our soul ; but, for the sake of brevity, I shall pass this by. I 
am not allowed therefore even to assume, for the sake [p. xxx] 
of the necessary practical employment of my reason, God, freedom, 
and immortality, if I cannot deprive speculative reason of its pre- 
tensions to transcendent insights, because reason, in order to 
arrive at these, must use principles which are intended originally 
for objects of possible experience only, and which, if in spite of 
this, they are applied to what cannot be an object of experience, 
really changes this into a phenomenon, thus rendering all practical 
extension of pure reason impossible. I had therefore to remove 
knowledge, in order to make room for belief. For the dogmatism 
of metaphysic, that is, the presumption that it is possible to 
achieve anything in metaphysic without a previous criticism of 
pure reason, is the source of all that unbelief, which is always very 
dogmatical, and wars against all morality. 



Supplement II 701 

If, then, it may not be too difficult to leave a bequest to pos- 
terity, in the shape of a systematical metaphysic, carried out 
according to the critique of pure reason, such a bequest is not to 
be considered therefore as of little value, whether we regard the 
improvement which reason receives through the secure method 
of a science, in place of its groundless groping and uncritical 
vagaries, or whether we look to the better employment [p. xxxi] 
of the time of our enquiring youth, who, if brought up in the 
ordinary dogmatism, are early encouraged to indulge in easy 
speculations on things of which they know nothing, and of which 
they, as little as anybody else, will ever understand anything; 
neglecting the acquirement of sound knowledge, while bent on 
the discovery of new metaphysical thoughts and opinions. The 
greatest benefit however will be, that such a work will enable us 
to put an end for ever to all objections to morality and religion, 
according to the Socratic method, namely, by the clearest proof 
of the ignorance of our opponents. Some kind of metaphysic has 
always existed, and will always exist, and with it a dialectic of pure 
reason, as being natural to it. It is therefore the first and most 
important task of philosophy to deprive metaphysic, once for all, 
of its pernicious influence, by closing up the sources of its errors. 

In spite of these important changes in the whole field of science, 
and of the losses which speculative reason must suffer in its fancied 
possessions, all general human interests, and all the [p. xxxii] 
advantages which the world hitherto derived from the teachings 
of pure reason, remain just the same as before. The loss, if any, 
affects only the monopoly of the schools, and by no means the 
interests of humanity. I appeal to the staunchest dogmatist, 
whether the proof of the continued existence of our soul after 
death, derived from the simplicity of the substance, or that of the 
freedom of the will, as opposed to the general mechanism of nat- 
ure, derived from the subtle, but inefficient, distinction between 
subjective and objective practical necessity, or that of the existence 
of God, derived from the concept of an Ens realissimum (the con- 
tingency of the changeable, and the necessity of a prime mover), 
have ever, after they had been started by the schools, penetrated 
the public mind, or exercised the slightest influence on its con- 



y02 Supplement II 

victions ? If this has not been, and in fact could not be so, on 
account of the unfitness of the ordinary understanding for such 
subtle speculations ; and if, on the contrary, with regard to the 

first point, the hope of a future life lias chiefly rested on that 
peculiar chara« ter of human nature, never to be satisfied by what 
i^ merely temporal (and insufficient, therefore, for the character 
of its whole destination) ; if with regard to the second, the clear 
consciousness of freedom was produced only by the [p. xxxiiij 
clear exhibition of duties in opposition to all the claims of sensu- 
ous desires ; and if, lastly, with regard to the third, the belief in a 
great and wise Author of the world has been supported entirely 
by the wonderful beauty, order, and providence, everywhere dis- 
played in nature, then this possession remains not only undis- 
turbed, but acquires even greater authority, because the schools 
have now been taught, not to claim for themselves any higher or 
fuller insight on a point which concerns general human interests, 
than what is equally within the reach of the great mass of men, 
and to confine themselves to the elaboration of these universally 
comprehensible, and, for moral purposes, quite sufficient proofs. 
The change therefore affects the arrogant pretensions of the 
schools only, which would fain be considered as the only judges 
and depositaries of such truth (as they are, no doubt, with regard 
to many other subjects), allowing to the public its use only, and 
trying to keep the key to themselves, quod mecu??i nescit, solus 
vult scire videri. At the same time full satisfaction is given to 
the more moderate claims of speculative philosophers, [p. xxxiv] 
They still remain the exclusive depositors of a science which bene- 
fits the masses without their knowing it, namely, the critique of 
reason. That critique can never become popular, nor does it need 
to be so, because, if on the one side the public has no understanding 
for the fine-drawn arguments in support of useful truths, it is not 
troubled on the other by the equally subtle objections. It is dif- 
ferent with the schools which, in the same way as every man who has 
once risen to the height of speculation, must know both the pro's 
and the con's and are bound, by means of a careful investigation 
of the rights of speculative reason, to prevent, once for all, the 
scandal which, sooner or later, is sure to be caused even to the 



Supplement II 703 

masses, by the quarrels in which metaphysicians (and as such, 
theologians also) become involved, if ignorant of our critique, and 
by which their doctrine becomes in the end entirely perverted. 
Thus, and thus alone, can the very root be cut off of materialism, 
fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, unbelief, fanaticis?ti, and supersti- 
tion, which may become universally injurious, and finally of ideal- 
ism and scepticism also, which are dangerous rather to the schools, 
and can scarcely ever penetrate into the public. If [p. xxxv] 
governments think proper ever to interfere with the affairs of the 
learned, it would be far more consistent with their wise regard for 
science as well as for society, to favour the freedom of such a criti- 
cism by which alone the labours of reason can be established on 
a firm footing, than to support the ridiculous despotism of the 
schools, which raise a loud clamour of public danger, whenever 
the cobwebs are swept away of which the public has never taken 
the slightest notice, and the loss of which it can therefore never 
perceive. 

Our critique is not opposed to the dogmatical procedure of 
reason, as a science of pure knowledge (for this must always be 
dogmatical, that is, derive its proof from sure principles a priori) , 
but to dogmatism only, that is, to the presumption that it is possi- 
ble to make any progress with pure (philosophical) knowledge, 
consisting of concepts, and guided by principles, such as reason 
has long been in the habit of employing, without first enquiring 
in what way, and by what right, it has come possessed of them. 
Dogmatism is therefore the dogmatical procedure of pure reason, 
without a previous criticism of its own powers ; and our opposition 
to this is not intended to defend either that loquacious [p. xxxvi] 
shallowness which arrogates to itself the good name of popularity, 
much less that scepticism which makes short work with the whole 
of metaphysic. On the contrary, our critique is meant to form a 
necessary preparation in support of a thoroughly scientific system 
of metaphysic, which must necessarily be carried out dogmatically 
and strictly systematically, so as to satisfy all the demands, not so 
much of the public at large, as of the schools, this being an indis- 
pensable condition, as it has undertaken to carry out its work 
entirely a priori, and thus to the complete satisfaction of specula- 



;c>4 Supplement II 

tive reason. In the execution of this plan, as traced out by the 
critique, that is, in a future system of metaphysic, we shall have 
to follow in the strict method of the celebrated Wolf, the greatest 
ot all dogmatic philosophers, who first showed (and by his example 
(ailed forth, in Germany, that spirit of thoroughness, which is not 
yet extinct) how the secure method of a science could be attained 
only by a legitimate establishment of principles, a clear definition 
of concepts, an attempt at strictness of proof, and an avoidance 
of all bold combinations in concluding. He was therefore most 
eminently qualified to raise metaphysics to the dignity of a science, 
if it had only occurred to him, by criticism of the organum, namely, 
of pure reason itself, first to prepare his field, — an omission to be 
ascribed, not so much to himself as to the dogmatical [p. xxxvii] 
spirit of his age, and with regard to which the philosophers of his 
own, as well as of all previous times, have no right to reproach 
each other. Those who reject, at the same time, the method of 
Wolf, and the procedure of the critique of pure reason, can have 
no other aim but to shake off the fetters of science altogether, and 
thus to change work into play, conviction into opinion, and phi- 
losophy into philodoxy. 



With regard to this second edition, I have tried, as was but 
fair, to do all I could in order to remove, as far as possible, the 
difficulties and obscurities which, not perhaps without my fault, 
have misled even acute thinkers in judging of my book. In the 
propositions themselves, and their proofs, likewise in the form and 
completeness of the whole plan, I have found nothing to alter, 
which is due partly to the long-continued examination to which 
I had subjected them, before submitting them to the public, and 
partly to the nature of the subject itself. For pure speculative 
reason is so constituted that it forms a true organism, in which 
everything is organic, the whole being there for the [p. xxxviii] 
sake of every part, and every part for the sake of the whole, so 
that the smallest imperfection, whether a fault or a deficiency, 
must inevitably betray itself in use. I venture to hope that this 



Supplement II 705 

system will maintain itself unchanged for the future also. It is 
not self-conceit which justifies me in this confidence, but the 
experimental evidence produced by the identity of the result, 
whether we proceed progressively from the smallest elements to 
the whole of pure reason, or retrogressively from the whole (for 
this also is given by the practical objects of reason) to every 
single part ; the fact being, that an attempt at altering even the 
smallest item produces at once contradictions, not only in the 
system, but in human reason in general. With regard to the style, 
however, much remains to be done ; and for that purpose, I have 
endeavoured to introduce several improvements into this second 
edition, which are intended to remove, first, misapprehensions in 
the ^Esthetic, especially with regard to the concept of time : 
secondly, obscurities in the deduction of the concepts of the 
understanding : thirdly, a supposed want of sufficient evidence, in 
proving the propositions of the pure understanding : fourthly, the 
false interpretation put on the paralogisms with which we charged 
rational psychology. To this point (only to the end of the first 
chapter of transcendental Dialectic) do the changes [p. xxxix] 
of style and representation 1 extend, and no further. Time was 

1 The only thing which might be called an addition, though in the method 
of proof only, is the new refutation of psychological idealism, and the strict 
(and as I believe the only possible) proof of the objective reality of external 
phenomena on p. 275 (Suppl. XXI). That idealism may be considered entirely 
innocent with respect to the essential aims of metaphysic (though it is not so in 
reality), yet it remains a scandal to philosophy, and to human reason in general, 
that we should have to accept the existence of things without us (from which 
we derive the whole material of knowledge for our own internal sense) on faith 
only, unable to meet with any satisfactory proof an opponent, who is pleased 
to doubt it. (See p. 476.) It will probably be urged against this proof 
that, after all, I am immediately conscious of that only which is within me, 
that is, of my representation of external things, and that consequently it must 
still remain uncertain whether there be outside me anything corresponding to it 
or not. But by internal experience I am conscious of my existence in [p. xl] 
time (consequently also, of its determinability in time); and this is more than 
to be conscious of my representation only, and yet identical with the empirical 
consciousness of my existence, which can be itself determined only by something 
connected with my existence, yet outside me. This consciousness of my exist- 
ence in time is therefore connected as identical with the consciousness of relation 



706 Supplement II 

too short for doing more, nor did I, with regard to the [p. xlj 
rest, meet with any misapprehensions on the part of [p. \H] 
competent and impartial judges. These, even though I must not 
name them with that praise which is due to them, will easily per- 
ceive in the proper place, that 1 have paid careful attention to 
their remarks. [p. xlii] 

to something outside me; so that it is experience, and not fiction, sense, and 
not imagination, which indissolubly connects the external with my internal sense. 
The external sense is by itself a relation of intuition to something real outside 
me; and its real, in contradistinction to a purely imaginary character, rests 

entirely on its being indissolubly connected with internal experience, as bring 
the condition of its possibility. This is what happens here, [f with the Intel' 
factual consciousness of my existence in the representation, lam, which accom- 
panies all my judgments and all acts of my understanding, 1 could at the same 
time connect a determination of that existence of mine b\ means of intellectual 
intuition, then that determination would not require the consciousness of rela- 
tion to something outside me. Hut although that intellectual consciousness 
comes first, the inner intuition, in which alone any existence can be determined, 
is sensuous and dependent on the condition of time; and that determination 
again, and therefore internal experience itself, depends on something perma- 
nent which is not within me, consequently on something outside me only, to 
which I must consider myself as standing in a certain relation. Hence the 
reality of the external sense is necessarily connected, in order to make experi- 
ence possible at all, with the reality of the internal sense; that is, T am con- 
scious, with the same certainty, that there are things outside me which have a 
reference to my sense, as that I exist myself in time. In order to ascertain to 
what given intuitions objects outside me really correspond (these intuitions 
belonging to the external sense, and not to the faculty of imagination), we must 
in each single case apply the rules according to which experience in general 
(even internal) is distinguished from imaginations, the proposition that there 
really is an external experience being always taken for granted. It may be well 
to add here the remark that the representation of something permanent in exist- 
ence is not the same as & permanent representation ; for this (the representation 
of something permanent in existence) can change and alternate, as all our rep- 
resentations, even those of matter, and may yet refer to something permanent, 
which must therefore be something external, and different from all my rep- 
resentations, the existence of which is necessarily involved in the determination 
of my own existence, and constitutes with it but one experience, which could 
never take place internally, unless (in part) it were external also. The how 
admits here of as little explanation as the permanent in time in general, the 
co-existence of which with the variable produces the concept of change. 



Supplement II 707 

These improvements, however, entail a small loss to the reader. 
It was inevitable, without making the book too voluminous, to 
leave out or abridge several passages which, though not essential 
to the completeness of the whole, may yet, as useful for other pur- 
poses, be missed by some readers. Thus only could I gain room 
for my new and more intelligible representation of the subject 
which, though it changes absolutely nothing with regard to propo- 
sitions, and even to proofs, yet deviates so considerably from the 
former, in the method of the treatment here and there, that mere 
additions and interpolations would not have been sufficient. This 
small loss, which every reader may easily supply by reference to 
the first edition, will I hope be more than compensated for by the 
greater clearness of the present. 

I have observed with pleasure and thankfulness in various pub- 
lications (containing either reviews or separate essays) that the 
spirit of thoroughness is not yet dead in Germany, but has only 
been silenced for a short time by the clamour of a fashionable 
and pretentious licence of thought, and that the difficul- [p. xiiii] 
ties which beset the thorny path of my critique, which is to lead 
to a truly scientific and, as such, permanent, and therefore most 
necessary, science of pure reason, have not discouraged bold and 
clear heads from mastering my book. To these excellent men, 
who so happily blend thorough knowledge with a talent for lucid 
exposition (to which I can lay no claim), I leave the task of bring- 
ing my, in that respect far from perfect, work to greater perfec- 
tion. There is no danger of its being refuted, though there is of 
its being misunderstood. For my own part, I cannot henceforth 
enter on controversies, though I shall carefully attend to all hints, 
whether from friends or opponents, in order to utilise them in a 
future elaboration of the whole system, according to the plan 
traced out in this propaedeutic. As during these labours I have 
advanced pretty far in years (this very month, into my sixty-fourth 
year), I must be careful in spending my time, if I am to carry out 
my plan, of furnishing a metaphysic of nature, and a metaphysic 
of morals, in confirmation of the truth of my critique both of spec- 
ulative and of practical reason, and must leave the elucidation 
of such obscurities as could at first be hardly avoided [p. xliv] 



708 Supplement II 

in such a work, and likewise the defence of the whole, to those 
excellent men who have made it their own. At single points 
every philosophical treatise may be pricked (for it cannot be 
armed at all points, like a mathematical one), while yet the 
organic structure of the system, considered as a whole, has not 
therefore to apprehend the slightest danger. Few only have that 
pliability of intellect to take in the whole of a system, if it is new; 
still fewer have an inclination for it, because they dislike every 
innovation. If we take single passages out of their connection, 
and contrast them with each other, it is easy to pick out apparent 
contradictions, particularly in a work written with all the freedom 
of a running speech. In the eyes of those who rely on the judg- 
ment of others, such contradictions may throw an unfavourable 
light on any work ; but they are easily removed, if we ourselves 
have once grasped the idea of the whole. And, if a theory pos- 
sesses stability in itself, then this action and reaction of praise 
and blame, which at first seemed so dangerous, serve only in time 
to rub off its superficial inequalities : nay, secure to it, in a short 
time, the requisite elegance also, if only men of insight, impar- 
tiality, and true popularity will devote themselves to its study. 

KONIGSBERG, April, 1 787. 



SUPPLEMENT III 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

of the Second Edition (1787), with the paging of that 

EDITION 

PAGE 

Introduction ' . . 1-30 

I. Of the difference between pure and empirical know- 
ledge .......... 1 

II. We are in possession of certain cognitions a priori, and 
even the ordinary understanding is never without 
them 3 

III. Philosophy requires a science, to determine the possi- 

bility, the principles, and the extent of all cognitions 

a p?'iori 6 

IV. Of the difference between analytical and synthetical 

judgments . . . . . . . . .10 

V. In all theoretical sciences of reason synthetical judg- 
ments a priori are contained as principles . . 14 
VI. The general problem of pure reason . . . 19 
VII. Idea and division of an independent science under the 

name of Critique of Pure Reason .... 24 

I. ELEMENTS OF TRANSCENDENTALISM . .. 31-732 
First Part. Transcendental ^Esthetic .... 33~73 



Introduction. § 1 ...... 

First Section. Of Space. § 2, 3 . 
Second Section. Of Time. §4-7. 
General Observations on transcendental ^Esthetic. § 8 
Conclusion of transcendental ^Esthetic . 

709 



33 
37 
46 

59 
73 



710 Supplement III 

PAGE 

Second Part. Transcendental Logic 74~732 

Introduction. The idea of a transcendental Logic . 74-88 

I. Of Logic in general 74 

II. Of transcendental Logic ...... 79 

III. Of the division of general Logic into analytical and 

dialectical ........ 82 

IV. Of the division of transcendental Logic into transcen- 

dental Analytic and Dialectic .... 87 

First Division. Transcendental Analytic . . . 89-349 
First Book. Analytic of concepts .... 90-169 
First Chapter. Method of discovering all pure con- 
cepts of the understanding ..... 91 
First St\ Hon. Of the logical use of the understand- 
ing in general ...... 



Second Section. Of the logical function of the under 



92 

95 
102 
116 
116 
124 
129 



standing in judgments. §9 

Third Section. Of the pure concepts of the under 
standing, or of the Categories. §10-12 
Second Chapter. Of the deduction of the pure con 
cepts of the understanding .... 

First Section. Of the principles of a transcendental 
deduction in general. § 13 

Transition to a transcendental deduction of the 
Categories. § 14 

Second Section. Transcendental deduction of the 
pure concepts of the understanding. § 15-27 
Second Book. Analytic of principles (transcendental doc- 
trine of the faculty of judgment) . . . 169-349 
Introduction. Of the transcendental faculty of judg- 
ment in general 171 

First Chapter. Of the schematism of the pure con- 
cepts of the understanding . . . . .176 
Second Chapter. System of all principles of the pure 

understanding . . . . . . .187 

First Section. Of the highest principle of all ana- 
lytical judgments . . . . . .189 

Second Section. Of the highest principle of all 
synthetical judgments . . . . 193 

Third Section . Systematical representation of all syn- 
thetical principles of the pure understanding 197-294 



Supplement III 



711 



PAGE 

202 



1 . Axioms of intuition .... 

2. Anticipations of perception . 

3. Analogies of experience 

First Analogy. Principle of the perma 
nence of substance .... 

Second Analogy. Principle of the succes- 
sion of time, according to the law of 
causality ....... 

Third Analogy. Principle of coexistence, 
according to the law of reciprocity . 

4. Postulates of empirical thought in general 
General note on the system of the prin- 
ciples ....... 

Third Chapter. On the ground of distinction of all 

subjects into phenomena and noumena 
Appendix. On the amphiboly of reflective concepts 
owing to the confusion of the empirical with the tran- 
scendental use of the understanding 
Second Division. Transcendental Dialectic 
Introduction ....... 

I. Of transcendental illusion 
II. Of pure reason as the seat of transcendental illu- 
sion 355 

A. Of reason in general 355 

B. Of the logical use of reason . . . 359 

C. Of the pure use of reason .... 362 
First Book. Of the concepts of pure reason . . . 366 

First Section. Of ideas in general .... 368 
Second Section. Of transcendental ideas . . . 377 
Third Section. System of transcendental ideas . . 390 
Second Book. Of the dialectical conclusions of pure 

reason 396-732 



207 
218 

224 

232 

256 
265 



294 



316 



349-732 
349-366 

349 



First Chapter. Of the Paralogisms of pure reason 
General note on the transition from rational psychology 

to cosmology 

Second Chapter. The Antinomy of pure reason 
First Section. System of cosmological ideas 
Second Section. Antithetic of pure reason 
First Antinomy ..... 
Second Antinomy .... 



399 

428 
432 
435 
448 

454 
462 



712 Supplement III 



Third Antinomy 472 

Fourth Antinomy 480 

Third Section. Of the interest of reason in these 

conflicts 4(p 

Fourth Section. Of the transcendental problems of 
pure reason and the absolute necessity of their 

solution 504 

Fifth Section. Sceptical representation of the cos- 
mologies! questions in the tour transcendental 

ideas . . . . . . . . -513 

Sixth Section. Transcendental idealism as the key 
to the solution of cosmological Dialectic . . 518 

nth Section. Critical decision of the cosmolog- 
ical conflict of reason with itself .... 525 
Eighth Si rhe regulative principle of pure 

reason with regard to the cosmological ideas . 536 
Ninth Section. Of the empirical use of the regula- 
tive principle of reason with regard to all cosmo- 
logical ideas 543 

I. Solution of the cosmological idea of the 
totality of the composition of phenomena 
of an universe ...... 545 

II. Solution of the cosmological idea of the 
totality of the division of a whole given in 
intuition ....... 551 

Concluding remarks on the solution of the 
transcendental mathematical ideas,, and 
preliminary remarks for the solution of the 
transcendental dynamical ideas . -556 
III. Solution of the cosmological ideas of the 
totality of the derivation of cosmical events 

from their causes 560 

Possibility of causality through freedom . 566 
Explanation of the cosmological idea of 
freedom in connection with the general 
necessity of nature . . . . . 570 
IV. Solution of the cosmological idea of the to- 
tality of the dependence of phenomena 
with regard to their existence in gen- 
eral 587 



Supplement III 713 



PAGE 



Concluding remarks on the whole antinomy 
of pure reason ...... 593 

Third Chapter. The ideal of pure reason . . . 595 
First Section. Of the ideal in general . . . 595 
Second Section. Of the transcendental ideal . . 599 
Third Section. Of the arguments of speculative 
reason in proof of the existence of a Supreme 

Being 611 

Fourth Section. Of the impossibility of an onto- 

logical proof of the existence of God . . . 620 
Fifth Section Of the impossibility of a cosmolog- 

ical proof of the existence of God . . -631 
Discovery and explanation of the dialectical illusion 
in all transcendental proofs of the existence of a 

necessary Being 642 

Sixth Section. Of the impossibility of the physico- 
theological proof. ...... 648 

Seventh Section. Criticism of all theology based on 

speculative principles of reason 659 

Appendix to the transcendental Dialectic . . 670 
Of the regulative use of the ideas of pure 

reason 670 

Of the ultimate aim of the natural Dialectic of 
human reason ...... 697 

II. TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF METHOD 733-884 
Introduction . . . . . . . . -735 

First Chapter. The discipline of pure reason . 736-823 
First Section. The discipline of pure reason in its 
dogmatical use ....... 740 

Second Section. The discipline of pure reason in its 
polemical use ....... 766 

Of the impossibility of a sceptical satisfaction of pure 
reason in conflict with itself .... 786 

Third Section. The discipline of pure reason with 
regard to the hypotheses ..... 797 

Fourth Section. The discipline of pure reason with 

regard to its proofs 810 

Second Chapter. The canon of pure reason . 823-884 
First Section. Of the ultimate aim of the pure use 
of our reason ....... 825 



714 Supple incut III 



PAGE 

Second Section. Of the ideal of the Sumntum 
Bonum, as determining the ultimate aim of Pure 
Reason ........ 832 

Third Section. Of trowing, knowing, and be- 
lieving 848 

Third Chapter. ' The architectonic of pure reason . 860 
Fourth Chapter. The history of pure reason . . 880 



SUPPLEMENT IV 

[See vol. ii. p. i] 



INTRODUCTION 



Of the Difference between Pure and Empirical Knowledge 

That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be 
no doubt. For how should the faculty of knowledge be called 
into activity, if not by objects which affect our senses, and which 
either produce representations by themselves, or rouse the activity 
of our understanding to compare, to connect, or to separate them ; 
and thus to convert the raw material of our sensuous impressions 
into a knowledge of objects, which we call experience? In re- 
spect of time, therefore, no knowledge within us is antecedent 
to experience, but all knowledge begins with it. 

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does 
not follow that it arises from experience. For it is quite possible 
that even our empirical experience is a compound of that which 
we receive through impressions, and of that which our own faculty 
of knowledge (incited only by sensuous impressions), supplies from 
itself, a supplement which we do not distinguish from that raw 
material, until long practice has roused our attention and rendered 
us capable of separating one from the other. 

It is therefore a question which deserves at least closer investi- 
gation, and cannot be disposed of at first sight, whether there 
exists a knowledge independent of experience, and even of all 
impressions of the senses? Such knowledge is called a priori, 
and distinguished from empi?'ical knowledge, which has its sources 
a posteriori, that is, in experience. 

7i5 



716 Supplement IV 

This term a priori, however, is not yet definite enough to indi- 
cate the full meaning of our question. For people are wont to 
say, even with regard to knowledge derived from experience, that 
we have it, or might have it, a priori, because we derive it from 
experience, not immediately, but from a general rule, which, how- 
ever, has itself been derived from experience. Thus one would 
say of a person who undermines the foundations of his house, 
that he might have known a priori that it would tumble down, 
that is, that he need not wait for the experience of its really 
tumbling down. But still he could not know this entirely a priori, 
because he had first to learn from experience that bodies are 
heavy, and will fall when their supports are taken away. 

We shall therefore, in what follows, understand by knowledge 
a priori knowledge which is absolutely independent of all experi- 
ence, and not of this or that experience only. Opposed to this 
is empirical knowledge, or such as is possible a posteriori only, 
that is, by experience. Knowledge a priori, if mixed up with 
nothing empirical, is called pure. Thus the proposition, for ex- 
ample, that every change has its cause, is a proposition a priori, 
but not pure : because change is a concept which can only be 
derived from experience. 

II 

We are in Possession of Certain Cognitions a priori, and even the 
Ordinary Understanding is never without them 

All depends here on a criterion, by which we may safely dis- 
tinguish between pure and empirical knowledge. Now experi- 
ence teaches us, no doubt, that something is so or so, but not 
that it cannot be different. First, then, if we have a proposition, 
which is thought, together with its necessity, we have a judgment 
a priori ; and if, besides, it is not derived from any proposition, 
except such as is itself again considered as necessary, we have an 
absolutely a priori judgment. Secondly, experience never imparts 
to its judgments true or strict, but only assumed or relative uni- 
versality (by means of induction), so that we ought always to say, 
so far as we have observed hitherto, there is no exception to this 



Supplement IV 717 

or that rule. If, therefore, a judgment is thought with strict uni- 
versality, so that no exception is admitted as possible, it is not 
derived from experience, but valid absolutely a priori. Empirical 
universality, therefore, is only an arbitrary extension of a validity 
which applies to most cases, to one that applies to all : as, for 
instance, in the proposition, all bodies are heavy. If, on the con- 
trary, strict universality is essential to a judgment, this always 
points to a special source of knowledge, namely, a faculty of 
knowledge a priori. Necessity, therefore, and strict universality 
are safe criteria of knowledge a priori, and are inseparable one 
from the other. As, however, in the use of these criteria, it is 
sometimes easier to show the contingency than the empirical lim- 
itation l of judgments, and as it is sometimes more convincing to 
prove the unlimited universality which we attribute to a judgment 
than its necessity, it is advisable to use both criteria separately, 
each being by itself infallible. 

That there really exist in our knowledge such necessary, and 
in the strictest sense universal, and therefore pure judgments 
a priori, is easy to show. If we want a scientific example, we 
have only to look to any of the propositions of mathematics ; if 
we want one from the sphere of the ordinary understanding, such 
a proposition as that each change must have a cause, will answer 
the purpose ; nay, in the latter case, even the concept of cause 
contains so clearly the concept of the necessity of its connection 
with an effect, and of the strict universality of the rule, that it 
would be destroyed altogether if we attempted to derive it, as 
Hume does, from the frequent concomitancy of that which 
happens with that which precedes, and from a habit arising 
thence (therefore from a purely subjective necessity), of con- 
necting representations. It is possible even, without having 
recourse to such examples in proof of the reality of pure proposi- 
tions a priori within our knowledge, to prove their indispensa- 
bility for the possibility of experience itself, thus proving it a 
priori. For whence should experience take its certainty, if all 
the rules which it follows were always again and again empirical, 

1 According to an emendation adopted both by Vaihinger and AdicUes. 



J\ 8 Supplement IV 

and therefore contingent and hardly fit to serve as first princi- 
ples? For the present, however, we may be satisfied for having 
shown the pure employment of the faculty of our knowledge as 
a matter of fact, with the criteria of it. 

Not only in judgments, however, but even in certain concepts, 
can we show their origin a priori. Take away, for example, from 
the concept of a body, as supplied by experience, everything that 
is empirical, one by one ; such as colour, hardness or softness, 
weight, and even impenetrability, and there still remains the 
space which the body (now entirely vanished) occupied : that 
you cannot take away. And in the same manner, if you remove 
from your empirical concept of any object, corporeal or incorpo- 
real, all properties which experience has taught you, you cannot 
take away from it that property by which you conceive it as a 
substance, or inherent in a substance (although such a concept 
contains more determinations than that of an object in general). 
Convinced, therefore, by the necessity with which that concept 
forces itself upon you, you will have to admit that it has its seat 
in your faculty of knowledge a priori. 



SUPPLEMENT V 

[See vol. ii. p. 7] 



Empirical judgments, as such, are all synthetical ; for it would 
be absurd to found an analytical judgment on experience, because, 
in order to form such a judgment, I need not at all step out of 
my concept, or appeal to the testimony of experience. That a 
body is extended, is a proposition perfectly certain a priori, and 
not an empirical judgment. For, before I call in experience, I 
am already in possession of all the conditions of my judgment 
in the concept of body itself. I have only to draw out from it, 
according to the principle of contradiction, the required predi- 
cate, and I thus become conscious, at the same time, of the 
necessity of the judgment, which experience could never teach 
me. But, though I do not include the predicate of gravity in 
the general concept of body, that concept, nevertheless, indicates 
an object of experience through one of its parts : so that I may 
add other parts also of the same experience, besides those which 
belonged to the former concept. I may, first, by an analytical 
process, realise the concept of body, through the predicates of 
extension, impermeability, form, etc., all of which are contained 
in it. Afterwards I expand my knowledge, and looking back to 
the experience from which my concept of body was abstracted, I 
find gravity always connected with the before-mentioned predi" 
cates, and therefore I add it synthetically to that concept as a 
predicate. It is, therefore, experience on which the possibility 
of the synthesis of the predicate of gravity with the concept of 
body is founded : because both concepts, though neither of them 
is contained in the other, belong to each other, though acci- 
dentally only, as parts of a whole, namely, of experience, which 
is itself a synthetical connection of intuitions. 

719 



SUPPLEMENT VI 

[See vol. ii. p. 9] 



/;/ all Theoretical Sciences of Reason Synthetical Judgments a priori 
are contained as Principles 

1. All mathematical judgments are synthetical. This proposi- 
tion, though incontestable certain, and very important to us for 
the future, seems to have hitherto escaped the observation of those 
who are engaged in the anatomy of human reason : nay, to be 
directly opposed to all their conjectures. Vox as it was found 
that all mathematical conclusions proceed according to the prin- 
ciple of contradiction (which is required by the nature of all 
apodictic certainty), it was supposed that the fundamental prin- 
ciples of mathematics also rested on the authority of the same 
principle of contradiction. This, however, was a mistake : for 
though a synthetical proposition may be understood according 
to the principle of contradiction, this can only be if another syn- 
thetical proposition is presupposed, from which the latter is 
deduced, but never by itself. First of all, we ought to observe, 
that mathematical propositions, properly so called, are always 
judgments a priori, and not empirical, because they carry along 
with them necessity, which can never be deduced from experi- 
ence. If people should object to this, I am quite willing to con- 
fine my statement to pure mathematics, the very concept of which 
implies that it does not contain empirical, but only pure know- 
ledge a priori. 

At first sight one might suppose indeed that the proposition 
7 + 5 = 12 is merely analytical, following, according to the prin- 
ciple of contradiction, from the concept of a sum of 7 and 5. 
1 720 



Supplement VI 721 

But, if we look more closely, we shall find that the concept of the 
sum of 7 and 5 contains nothing beyond the union of both sums 
into one, whereby nothing is told us as to what this single number 
may be which combines both. We by no means arrive at a con- 
cept of Twelve, by thinking that union of Seven and Five ; and 
we may analyse our concept of such a possible sum as long as we 
will, still we shall never discover in it the concept of Twelve. We 
must go beyond these concepts, and call in the assistance of the 
intuition corresponding to one of the two, for instance, our five 
fingers, or, as Segner does in his arithmetic, five points, and so by 
degrees add the units of the Five, given in intuition, to the con- 
cept of the Seven. For I first take the number 7, and taking the 
intuition of the fingers of my hand, in order to form with it the 
concept of the 5, I gradually add the units, which I before took 
together, to make up the number 5, by means of the image of my 
hand, to the number 7, and I thus see the number 12 arising 
before me. That 5 should be added to 7 was no doubt implied 
in my concept of a sum 7 + 5, but not that that sum should be 
equal to 12. An arithmetical proposition is, therefore, always 
synthetical, which is seen more easily still by taking larger num- 
bers, where we clearly perceive that, turn and twist our concep- 
tions as we may, we could never, by means of the mere analysis 
of our concepts and without the help of intuition, arrive at the 
sum that is wanted. 

Nor is any proposition of pure geometry analytical. That the 
straight line between two points is the shortest, is a synthetical 
proposition. For my concept of straight contains nothing of 
magnitude (quantity), but a quality only. The concept of the 
shortest is, therefore, purely adventitious, and cannot be deduced 
from the concept of the straight line by any analysis whatsoever. 
The aid of intuition, therefore, must be called in, by which alone 
the synthesis is possible. 

[It is true that some few propositions, presupposed by the 
geometrician, are really analytical, and depend on the principle 
of contradiction : but then they serve only, like identical proposi- 
tions, to form the chain of the method, and not as principles. 
Such are the propositions, a=a, the whole is equal to itself, or 
3A 



722 Supplement VI 

(a + />) > a, that the whole is greater than its part. And even 
these, though they arc valid according to mere concepts, arc only 
admitted in mathematics, because they can be represented in 
intuition. 1 ] What often makes us believe that the predicate of 
such apodictic judgments is contained in our concept, and the 
judgment therefore analytical, is merely the ambiguous character 
of the expression. We are told that we ought to foin in thought 
a certain predicate to a given concept, and this necessity is inhe- 
rent in the concepts themselves. But the question is not what we 
ought to join to the given concept, but what we really think in it, 
though confusedly only, and then it becomes clear that the predi- 
cate is no doubt inherent in those concepts by necessity, not, 
however, as thought in the concept itself, but by means of an 
intuition, which must be added to the concept. 

2. Natural science {physica) contains synthetical judgments 
a priori as principles. 1 shall adduce-, as examples, a hw prop- 
ositions only, such as, that in all changes of the material world 
the quantity of matter always remains unchanged : or that in all 
communication of motion, action and reaction must always equal 
each other. It is clear not only that both convey necessity, and 
that, therefore, their origin is a priori, but also that they are syn- 
thetical propositions. For in the concept of matter I do not con- 
ceive its permanency, but only its presence in the space which it 
fills. I therefore go beyond the concept of matter in order to 
join something to it a priori, which I did not before conceive in 
it. The proposition is, therefore, not analytical, but synthetical, 
and yet a priori, and the same applies to the other propositions 
of the pure part of natural science. 

3. Metaphysic, even if we look upon it as hitherto a tentative 
science only, which, however, is indispensable to us, owing to the 
very nature of human reason, is meant to contain synthetical 
k?io7vledge a priori. Its object is not at all merely to analyse such 
concepts as we make to ourselves of things a priori, and thus to 
explain them analytically, but to expand our knowledge a priori. 

1 This paragraph from It is tj-ue to intuition seems to have been a margi- 
nal note, as shown by Dr. Vaihinger. See Translator's Preface, p. Hi. 



Supplement VI 723 

This we can only do by means of concepts which add something 
to a given concept that was not contained in it ; nay, we even 
attempt, by means of synthetical judgments a priori, to go so far 
beyond a given concept that experience itself cannot follow us : 
as, for instance, in the proposition that the world must have a 
first beginning. Thus, according at least to its intentions, meta- 
physic consists merely of synthetical propositions a priori. 



VI 

The General Problem of Pure Reason 

Much is gained if we are able to bring a number of investi- 
gations under the formula of one single problem. For we thus 
not only facilitate our own work by defining it accurately, but en- 
able also everybody else who likes to examine it to form a judg- 
ment, whether we have really done justice to our purpose or not. 
Now the real problem of pure reason is contained in the. question, 
How are synthetical judgments a priori possible ? 

That metaphysic has hitherto remained in so vacillating a state 
of ignorance and contradiction is entirely due to people not 
having thought sooner of this problem, or perhaps even of a dis- 
tinction between analytical and synthetical judgments. The solu- 
tion of this problem, or a sufficient proof that a possibility which 
is to be explained does in reality not exist at all, is the question 
of life or death to metaphysic. David Hume, who among all 
philosophers approached nearest to that problem, though he was 
far from conceiving it with sufficient definiteness and universality, 
confining his attention only to the synthetical proposition of the 
connection of an effect with its causes {principium causalitatis), 
arrived at the conclusion that such a proposition a priori is 
entirely impossible. According to his conclusions, everything 
which we call metaphysic would turn out to be a mere delusion 
of reason, fancying that it knows by itself what in reality is only 
borrowed from experience, and has assumed by mere habit the 
appearance of necessity. If he had grasped our problem in all 
its universality, he would never have thought of an assertion which 



724 Supplement \ 7 

destroys all pure philosophy, because he would have perceived 
that, according to his argument, no pure mathematical science 
was possible either, on account of its certainly containing syn- 
thetical propositions a priori; and from such an assertion his 
good sense would probably have saved him. 

( )n the solution of our problem depends, at the same time, the 
possibility of the pure employment of reason, in establishing and 
carrying out all sciences which contain a theoretical knowledge 
a priori of objects, i.e. the answer to the questions 

How is pure mathematical science possible? 

How is pure natural science possible ? 

As these sciences really exist, it is quite proper to ask, How 
they are possible? for that they must be possible, is proved by 
their reality. 1 

But as to metaphysic ^ the bad progress which it has hitherto 
made, and the impossibility of asserting of any of the metaphysical 
systems yet brought forward that it really exists, so far as its essen- 
tial aim is concerned, must fill every one with doubts as to its 
possibility. 

Yet, in a certain sense, this kind of knowledge also must be 
looked upon as given, and though not as a science, yet as a nat- 
ural disposition {metaphysial ualuralis) metaphysic is real. For 
human reason, without being moved merely by the conceit of 
omniscience, advances irresistibly, and urged on by its own need, 
to questions such as cannot be answered by any empirical employ- 
ment of reason, or by principles thence derived, so that we may 
really say, that all men, as soon as their reason became ripe for 
speculation, have at all times possessed some kind of metaphysic, 
and will always continue to possess it. And now it will also have 
to answer the question 

1 One might doubt this with regard to pure natural science; but one has 
only to consider the different propositions which stand at the beginning of real 
(empirical) physical science, those, for example, relating to the permanence of 
the same quantity of matter to the vis inertiae, the equality of action and reac- 
tion, etc., in order to become convinced that they constitute a physic a pur a, or 
rationalise which well deserves to stand by itself as an independent science, in 
its whole extent, whether narrow or wide. 



Supplement VI 725 

How is metaphysic possible, as a natural disposition ? that is, 
how does the nature of universal human reason give rise to ques- 
tions which pure reason proposes to itself, and which it is urged 
on by its own need to answer as well as it can? 

As, however, all attempts which have hitherto been made at 
answering these natural questions (for instance, whether the world 
has a beginning, or exists from all eternity) have always led to 
inevitable contradictions, we cannot rest satisfied with the mere 
natural disposition to metaphysic, that is, with the pure faculty 
of reason itself, from which some kind of metaphysic (whatever it 
may be) always arises ; but it must be possible to arrive with it 
at some certainty as to our either knowing or not knowing its 
objects ; that is, we must either decide that we can judge of the 
objects of these questions, or of the power or want of power of 
reason, in deciding anything upon them, — therefore that we can 
either enlarge our pure reason with certainty, or that we have 
to impose on it fixed and firm limits. This last question, which 
arises out of the former more general problem, would properly 
assume this form, 

How is metaphysic possible, as a science ? 

The critique of reason leads, therefore, necessarily, to true sci- 
ence, while its dogmatical use, without criticism, lands us in ground- 
less assertions, to which others, equally specious, can always be 
opposed, that is, in scepticism. 

Nor need this science be very formidable by its great prolixity, 
for it has not to deal with the objects of reason, the variety of 
which is infinite, but with reason only, and with problems, sug- 
gested by reason and placed before it, not by the nature of things, 
which are different from it, but by its own nature ; so that, if rea- 
son has only first completely understood its own power, with refer- 
ence to objects given to it in experience, it will have no difficulty 
in determining completely and safely the extent and limits of its 
attempted application beyond the limits of all experience. 

We may and must therefore regard all attempts which have 
hitherto been made at building up a metaphysic dogmatically, as 
non-avenu. For the mere analysis of the concepts that dwell in 
our reason a priori, which has been attempted in one or other 



726 Supple in cut VI 

of those metaphysical systems, is by no means the aim, but only 
a preparation for true metaphysic, namely, the answer to the ques- 
tion, how we can enlarge our knowledge a priori synthetically ; 
nay. it is utterly useless for that purpose, because it only shows 
what is contained in those concepts, but not by what process 
a priori we arrive at them, in order thus to determine the validity 
of their employment with reference to all objects of knowledge 
in general. Nor does it require much self-denial to give up these 
pretensions, considering that the undeniable and, in the dogmatic 
procedure, inevitable contradictions of reason with itself, have long 
deprived every system of metaphysic of all authority. More firm- 
ness will be required in order not to be deterred by difficulties 
from within and resistance from without, from trying to advance 
a science, indispensable to human reason (a science of which we 
may lop off every branch, but will never be able to destroy the 
root), by a treatment entirely opposed to all former treatments, 
which promises, at last, to ensure the successful and fruitful growth 
of metaphysical science. 



SUPPLEMENT VII 

[See vol. ii. p. 1 1] 



Still less ought we to except here a criticism on the books and 
systems treating of pure reason, but only on the faculty of pure 
reason itself. It is only if we are in possession of this, that we 
possess a safe criterion for estimating the philosophical' value of 
old and new works on this subject. Otherwise, an unqualified 
historian and judge does nothing but criticise the groundless 
assertions of others by means of his own, which are equally 
groundless. 

727 



SUPPLEMENT VIII 

[See vol. ii. p. 23] 



4. Space is represented as an infinite given quantity. Now 
it is quite true that every concept is to be thought as a repre- 
sentation, which is contained in an infinite number of different 
possible representations (as their common characteristic), and 
therefore comprehends them : but no concept, as such, can be 
thought as if it contained in itself an infinite number of represen- 
tations. Nevertheless, space is so thought (for all parts of in- 
finite space exist simultaneously). Consequently, the original 
representation of space is an intuition a priori, and not a concept. 

§3 

Transcendental Exposition of the Co?icept of Space 

I understand by transcendental exposition (Erdrterung), the 
explanation of a concept, as of a principle by which the possibility 
of other synthetical cognitions a priori can be understood. For 
this purpose it is necessary, 1. That such cognitions really do 
flow from the given concept. 2. That they are possible only 
under the presupposition of a given mode of explanation of such 
concept. 

Geometry is a science which determines the properties of space 
synthetically, and yet a priori. What then must be the repre- 
sentation of space, to render such a knowledge of it possible? 
It must be originally intuitive ; for it is impossible from a mere 
concept to deduce propositions which go beyond that concept, 
as we do in geometry (Introduction V. See Suppl. VI). That 
intuition, however, must be a priori, that is, it must exist within 
us before any perception of the object, and must therefore be 

728 



Supplement VIII 729 

pure, not empirical intuition. For all geometrical propositions 
are apodictic, that is, connected with the consciousness of their 
necessity, as for instance the proposition, that space has only 
three dimensions ; and such propositions cannot be empirical 
judgments, nor conclusions from them (Introduction II. See 
Suppl. IV. 11). 

How then can an external intuition dwell in the mind anterior 
to the objects themselves, and in which the concept of objects 
can be determined a priori ? Evidently not otherwise than so 
far as it has its seat in the subject only, as the formal condition 
under which the subject is affected by the objects and thereby is 
receiving an immediate representation, that is, intuition of them ; 
therefore as a form of the external sense in general. 

It is therefore by our explanation only that the possibility of 
geometry as a synthetical science a priori becomes intelligible. 
Every other explanation, which fails to account for this possibility, 
can best be distinguished from our own by that criterion, although 
it may seem to have some similarity with it. 



SUPPLEMENT IX 

vol. ii. p. 25] 



With the exception of space there is no other subjective repre- 
sentation, referring to something external, that could be called 
a priori objective. For from none of them can we derive syn- 
thetical propositions a priori, as we can from the intuition in 
space § 3. (See Suppl. VIII.) Strictly speaking, therefore, 
they can claim no ideality at all, though they agree with the repre- 
sentation of space in this, that they belong only to the subjective 
nature of sensibility, for instance, of sight, of hearing, and feeling, 
through the sensations of colours, sounds, and heat. All these, 
however, being sensations only, and not intuitions, do not help 
us by themselves to know any object, least of all a priori. 

730 



SUPPLEMENT X 

[See vol. ii, p. 28] 



§ 5 

Transcendental Exposition of the Concept of Time 

I can here refer to No. in. p. 27, where, for the sake of 
brevity, I have placed what is properly transcendental under the 
head of metaphysical exposition. Here I only add that the con- 
cept of change, and with it the concept of motion (as change of 
place), is possible only through and in the representation pf time ; 
and that, if this representation were not intuitive (internal) a 
p?iori, no concept, whatever it be, could make us understand 
the possibility of a change, that is, of a connection of contradic- 
torily opposed predicates (for instance, the being and not-being 
of one and the same thing in one and the same place) in one 
and the same object. It is only in time that both contradictorily 
opposed determinations can be met with in the same object, that 
is, one after the other. Our concept of time, therefore, exhibits 
the possibility of as many synthetical cognitions a priori as are 
found in the general doctrine of motion, which is very rich in 
them. 

73i 



SUPPLEMENT XI 

[See vol. ii. p. 43] 



II. As a confirmation of this theory of the ideality both of the 
external and of the internal sense, and therefore of all objects of 
the senses as mere phenomena, we may particularly remark, that 
everything in our knowledge which belongs to intuition (exclud- 
ing therefore the feelings of pain and pleasure, and the will, 
which are no knowledge at all) contains nothing but mere rela- 
tions, namely, of the places in an intuition (extension), change 
of places (motion), and laws, according to which that change is 
determined (moving forces). Nothing is told us thereby as to 
what is present in the place, or what, besides the change of 
place, is active in the things. A thing by itself, however, cannot 
be known by mere relations, and we may, therefore, fairly con- 
clude that, as the external sense gives us nothing but representa- 
tions of relations, that sense can contain in its representation only 
the relation of an object to the subject, and not what is inside the 
object by itself. The same applies to internal intuition. Not 
only do the representations of the external senses constitute its 
proper material with which we fill our mind, but time, in which 
these representations are placed, and which precedes even our 
consciousness of them in experience, nay, forms the formal condi- 
tion of the manner in which we place them in the mind, contains 
itself relations of succession, coexistence, and that which must be 
coexistent with succession, namely, the permanent. Now that 
which, as a representation, can precede every act of thinking 
something, is the intuition : and, if it contains nothing but rela- 
tions, then the form of intuition. As this represents nothing 
except what is being placed in the mind, it can itself be the 
manner only in which the mind, through its own activity, that is, 

732 



Supplement XI 733 

by this placing of its representation, is affected by itself, in other 
words, an internal sense with respect to its form. Whatever is 
represented by a sense is so far always phenomenal, and we should 
therefore have either to admit no internal sense at all, or the sub- 
ject, which is its object, could be represented by it as phenomenal 
only, and not, as it might judge of itself, if its intuition were spon- 
taneous only, that is, if it were intellectual. The difficulty here 
lies wholly in this, how a subject can have an internal intuition of 
itself: but this difficulty is common to every theory. The con- 
sciousness of self (apperception) is the simple representation of 
the ego, and if by it alone all the manifold (representations) in 
the subject were given spontaneously, the inner intuition would be 
intellectual. In man this consciousness requires internal percep- 
tion of the manifold, which is previously given in the subject, and 
the manner in which this is given in the mind without spontaneity, 
must, on account of this difference, be called sensibility. If the 
faculty of self-consciousness is to seek for, that is, to apprehend, 
what lies in the mind, it must affect the mind, and can thus only 
produce an intuition of itself. The form of this, which lay ante- 
cedently in the mind, determines the manner in which the mani- 
fold exists together in the mind, namely, in the representation of 
time. The intuition of self, therefore, is not, as if it could repre- 
sent itself immediately and as spontaneously and independently 
active, but according to the manner in which it is internally 
affected, consequently as it appears to itself, not as it is. 

III. If I say that the intuition of external objects and the self- 
intuition of the mind, represent both (viz. the objects and the 
mind) in space and time, as they affect our senses, that is, as 
they appear, I do not mean, that these objects are mere illusion. 
For the objects, as phenomena, nay, even the properties which 
we ascribe to them, are always looked upon as something really 
given : and all we do is, that, as their quality depends only on 
the manner of intuition on the part of the subject in relation to a 
given object, we distinguish the object, as phenomenon, from itself, 
as an object by itself. Thus, if I assert that the quality of space 
and time, according to which, as a condition of their existence, I 
accept both external objects and my own soul, lies in my manner 



734 Supplement XI 

of intuition and not in these objects by themselves, I do not mean 
to say that bodies seem only to exist outside me, or that my soul 
seems only to be given in my self-consciousness. It would be my 
own fault, if I changed that, which I ought to count as phenome- 
nal, into mere illusion. 1 

This cannot happen, however, according to our principle of the 
ideality of all sensuous intuitions; on the contrary, it is only when 
we attribute objective reality to those forms of intuition that every- 
thing is changed inevitably into mere illusion. For if we take 
space and time as properties that ought to exist as possible in 
things by themselves, and then survey the absurdities in which we 
should be involved in having to admit that two infinite things, 
which are not substances, nor something inherent in substances, 
but nevertheless must be something existing, nay, the necessary 
condition of the existence of all things, would remain, even if all 
existing things were removed, we really cannot blame the good 
Bishop Berkeley for degrading bodies to mere illusion. Nay, it 
would follow that even our own existence, which would thus be 
made dependent on the independent reality of such a non-entity 
as time, must become a mere illusion, an absurdity which hitherto 
no one has been guilty of. 

IV. In natural theology, where we think of an object which 
not only can never be an object of intuition to us, but which even 
to itself can never be an object of sensuous intuition, great care is 
taken to remove all conditions of space and time from its intui- 

1 Phenomenal predicates can be attributed to the object in its relation to 
our sense : as for instance to the rose its red colour, and its scent. But what 
is merely illusion can never be attributed to an object as a predicate, for the 
simple reason that the illusion attributes to the object by itself something 
which belongs to it only in its relation to the senses, or to a subject in general : 
as for instance the two handles, which were formerly attributed to Saturn. 
That which is never to be found in the object itself, but always in its relation 
to a subject, and is inseparable from its representation by a subject, is phenom- 
enal, and the predicates of space and time are therefore rightly attributed to 
objects of the senses, as such. In this there is no illusion. If, on the contrary, 
I were to attribute to the rose by itself 'redness, handles to Saturn, and extension 
to all external objects, without restricting my judgment to the relation of these 
objects to a subject, we should have illusion. 



Supplement XI 735 

tion (for all its knowledge must be intuitive, and not thought, 
which always involves limitation). But how are we justified in 
doing this, when we have first made space and time forms of 
things by themselves, such as would remain as conditions of the 
existence of things a priori, even if the things themselves had 
been removed? If conditions of all existence, they would also be 
conditions of the existence of God. If we do not wish to change 
space and time into objective forms of all things, nothing remains 
but to accept them as subjective forms of our external as well as 
internal intuition, which is called sensuous, for the very reason 
that it is not originally spontaneous, that is such, that it could itself 
give us the existence of the objects of intuition (such an intuition, 
so far as we can understand, can belong to the First Being only), 
but dependent on the existence of objects, and therefore possible 
only, if the faculty of representation in the subject is affected by 
them. 

It is not necessary, moreover, that we should limit this intuition 
in space and time to the sensibility of man ; it is quite, possible 
that all finite thinking beings must necessarily agree with us on 
this point (though we cannot decide this) . On account of this 
universal character, however, it does not cease to be sensibility, 
for it always is, and remains derivative {intuitus derivativus), not 
original {intuitus originarius) , and therefore not intellectual intui- 
tion. For the reason mentioned before, the latter intuition seems 
only to belong to the First Being, and never to one which is 
dependent, both in its existence and its intuition (which intuition 
determines its existence with reference to given objects). This 
latter remark, however, must only be taken as an illustration of 
our aesthetic theory, and not as a proof. 



Conclusion of the Transcendental ^Esthetic 

Here, then, we have one of the requisites for the solution of 
the general problem of transcendental philosophy, How arc syn- 
thetical propositions a priori possible ? namely, pure intuitions a 
priori, space and time. In them we find, if in a judgment a priori 



736 Supplement XI 

we want to go beyond a given concept, that which can be discov- 
ered a priori, not in the concept, but in the intuition correspond- 
ing to it, and can be connected with it synthetically. For this 
very reason, however, such judgments can never go beyond the 
objects of the senses, but are valid only for objects of possible 
experience. 



SUPPLEMENT XII 

[See vol. ii. p. 74] 



§» 

This table of categories suggests some interesting considera- 
tions, which possibly may have important consequences with re- 
gard to the scientific form of all knowledge of reason. For it is 
clear that such a table will be extremely useful, nay, indispensable, 
in the theoretical part of philosophy, in order to trace the com- 
plete plan of a whole science, so far as it rests on concepts a priori, 
and to divide it systematically according to fixed piinciples, because 
that table contains all elementary concepts of the understanding 
in their completeness, nay, even the form of a system of them in 
the human understanding, and indicates therefore all the momenta 
of a projected speculative science, nay, even their order. Of this 
I have given an example elsewhere. 1 Here follow some of the 
considerations. 

The first is, that this table, which contains four classes of the 
concepts of the understanding, may, in the first instance, be 
divided into two sections, the former of which refers to objects of 
intuition (pure, as well as empirical), the latter to the existence 
of those objects (either in their relation to each other, or to the 
understanding). 

The first section I shall call that of the mathematical, the 
second, that of the dynamical categories. The first section has 
no correlates, which are met with in the second section only. 
Must not this difference have some ground in the nature of the 
understanding? 

Our second remark is, that in every class there is the same 
number of categories, namely three, which again makes us ponder, 

1 Metaphysical Elements of Natural Science. 
3* 737 



738 Supplement XII 

because generally all division a priori by means of concepts must 
be dichotomy. It should be remarked also, that the third cate- 
gory always arises from the combination of the second with the 
first. Thus totality is nothing but plurality considered as unity ; 
limitation nothing but reality connected with negation ; community 
is the casuality of a substance as determining another reciprocally ; 
lastly, necessity, the existence which is given by possibility itself. 
It must not be supposed, however, that therefore the third cate- 
gory is only a derivative, and not a primary concept of the pure 
understanding, fur the joining of the first and second concepts, 
in order to produce the third, requires an independent act of the 
understanding, which is not identical with the act that produces 
the first and second concepts, dim- the concept of a number 
(which belongs to the category of totality) is not always possible 
when we have the concepts of plurality and unity (for instance, 
in the concept of the infinite) ; nor can we understand by simply 
combining the concept of a cause and that of a substance, the 
influence, that is, how a substance can become the cause of some- 
thing in another substance. This shows that a separate act of the 
understanding is here required, and the same applies to all the 
rest. 

Third observation. With regard to one category, namely, that 
of community, which is found in the third class, its accordance with 
the form of a disjunctive judgment, which corresponds to it in the 
table of logical functions, is not so evident as elsewhere. 

In order to become quite certain of that accordance, we must 
remark that in all disjunctive judgments their sphere (that is, all 
that is contained in them) is represented as a whole, divided into 
parts (the subordinate concepts), and that, as one of them cannot 
be contained under the other, they are conceived as co-ordinate, 
not as subordinate, determining each other, not in one direction 
only, as in a series, but reciprocally, as in an aggregate (if one 
member of the division is given, all the rest are excluded, and 
vice versa). 

A similar connection is conceived in a whole of things, in which 
one, as effect, is not subordinated to another as the cause of its 
existence, but is co-ordinated with it, simultaneously and recipro- 



Supplement XII 739 

cally, as cause of the determination of the other (as, for instance, 
in a body of which the parts reciprocally attract and repel each 
other). This is a kind of connection totally different from that 
which exists in a mere relation of cause to effect (of ground to 
consequence), for here the consequence does not reciprocally 
determine the ground again, nor (as in the case of the Creator 
and the creation) constitute with it a whole. The process of the 
understanding, in representing to itself the sphere of a divided 
concept, is the same as that by which it thinks a thing as divisible : 
and in the same manner in which, in the former, the members of 
a division exclude each other, and are yet connected in one 
sphere, the understanding represents to itself the parts of the 
latter as existing (as substances), each independent of the rest, 
and yet united in a whole. 



§ 12 

In the transcendental philosophy of the ancients there is another 
chapter containing concepts of the understanding which, though 
they are not counted among the categories, are yet considered by 
them as concepts a priori of objects. If so, they would increase 
the number of the categories, which cannot be. They are set 
forth in the famous proposition of the Schoolmen, ' quodlibet ens 
est unum> verum, bonum? Now, although the inferences to be 
drawn from this principle (yielding nothing but tautological propo- 
sitions) were very meagre, so that modern metaphysicians mention 
it almost by courtesy only, a thought which has maintained itself 
so long, however empty it may seem, deserves an investigation 
with regard to its origin, nay, leads us to suspect that it may have 
its foundation in some rule of the understanding which, as often 
happens, has only been wrongly interpreted. What are supposed 
to be transcendental predicates of things are nothing but logical 
requirements and criteria of all knowledge of things in general, 
whereby that knowledge is founded on the categories of quantity, 
namely, unity, plurality, and totality. Only, instead of taking them 
as materially belonging to the possibility of things by themselves, 



740 Supplement XII 

they (the predicates, or rather those who employed them) used 
them, in fact, in their formal meaning only, as forming a logical 
requisite for every kind of knowledge, and yet incautiously made 
these criteria ni thought to be properties of the things by them- 
selves. In every < ognition o( an object there is unity of concept, 
which may be I ailed qualitative unity, so far as we think by it only 
the unity in the comprehension of the manifold material of our 
knowledge : a>, for instance, the unity of the subject in a play, or 
a speei h, or a fable. Secondly, there is truth, in respect to the 
deductions from it. The more true deductions can be made from 
a given concept, the more criteria are there of its objective reality. 
This might be called the qualitative plurality of criteria, which 
belong to a concept as their common ground (but are not con- 
ceived in it. as quantity). Thirdly, there is completeness, which 
consists in this, that the plurality together leads back to the unity 
of the concept, according completely with this and with no other 
concept, which may be called the qualitative completeness (totality). 
This shows that these logical criteria of the possibility of know- 
ledge in general do nothing but change the three categories of 
quantity, in which the unity in the production of the quantum 
must throughout be taken as homogeneous, for the purpose of 
connecting heterogeneous elements of knowledge also in one con- 
sciousness, by means of the quality of the cognition as the princi- 
ple of the connection. Thus the criterion of the possibility of a 
concept (but not of its object) is the definition of it, in which the 
unity of the concept, the truth of all that may be immediately de- 
duced from it, and lastly, the completeness of what has been deduced 
from it, supply all that is necessary for the constitution of the 
whole concept. In the same manner the criterion of an hypothesis 
consists, first, in the intelligibility of the ground which has been 
admitted /#/- the sake of explanation, or of its unity (without any 
auxiliary hypothesis) ; secondly, in the truth of the consequences 
to be deduced from it (their accordance with themselves and with 
experience) ; and lastly, in the completeness of the ground admitted 
for the explanation of these consequences, which point back to 
neither more nor less than what was admitted in the hypothesis, 
and agree in giving us again, analytically a posteriori, what had 



Supplement XII 741 

been thought synthetically a priori. The concepts of unity, truth, 
and perfection, therefore, do not supplement the transcendental 
table of the categories, as if it were imperfect, but they serve only, 
after the relation of these concepts to objects has been entirely 
set aside, to bring their employment under general logical rules, 
for the agreement of knowledge with itself. 



SUPPLEMENT XIII 

[See vol. ii. p. 84] 



Locke, for want of this reflection, and because he met with 
pure concepts of the understanding in experience, derived them 
also from experience, and yet acted so inconsistently that he at- 
tempted to use them for knowledge which far exceeds all limits 
of experience. David Hume saw that, in order to be able to do 
this, these concepts ought to have their origin a priori; but as 
he could not explain how it was possible that the understanding 
should be constrained to think concepts, which by themselves are 
not united in the understanding, as necessarily united in the object, 
and never thought that possibly the understanding might itself, 
through these concepts, be the author of that experience in which 
its objects are found, he was driven by necessity to derive them 
from experience (namely, from a subjective necessity, produced 
by frequent association in experience, which at last is wrongly 
supposed to be objective, that is, from habit) . He acted, however, 
very consistently, by declaring it to be impossible to go with these 
concepts, and with the principles arising from them, beyond the 
limits of experience. This empirical deduction, which was adopted 
by both philosophers, cannot be reconciled with the reality of our 
scientific knowledge a priori, namely, pure mathematics and general 
natural science, and is therefore refuted by facts. The former of 
these two celebrated men opened a wide door to fantastic extrava- 
gance, because reason, if it has once established such pretensions, 
can no longer be checked by vague praises of moderation ; the 
other, thinking that he had once discovered so general an illusion 
of our faculty of knowledge, which had formerly been accepted as 
reason, gave himself over entirely to scepticism. We now intend 
to make the experiment whether it is not possible to conduct 

742 



Supplement XIII 743 

reason safely between these two rocks, to assign to her definite 
limits, and yet to keep open for her the proper field for all her 
activities ? 

I shall merely premise an explanation of what I mean by the 
categories. They are concepts of an object in general by which 
its intuition is regarded as determined with reference to one of the 
logical functions in judgments. Thus the function of the categorical 
judgment was that of the relation of the subject to the predicate ; 
for instance, all bodies are divisible. Here, however, with refer- 
ence to the pure logical employment of the understanding, it re- 
mained undetermined to which of the two concepts the function 
of the subject, or the predicate, was to be assigned. For we could 
also say, some divisible is body. But by bringing the concept of 
body under the category of substance, it is determined that its 
empirical intuition in experience must always be considered as 
subject and never as predicate only. The same applies to all 
other categories. 



SUPPLEMENT XIV 

[See vol. ii. p. 84] 



OF THE DEDUCTION OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF 

THE understanding; 

Second Section 
Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding 

Of the Possibility of Connecting (conjunctio) in General 

The manifold of representations may be given in an intuition 
which is purely sensuous, that is, nothing but receptivity, and the 
form of that intuition may lie a priori in our faculty of representa- 
tion, without being anything but the manner in which a subject is 
affected. But the connection (conjunctio) of anything manifold 
can never enter into us through the senses, and cannot be con- 
tained, therefore, already in the pure form of sensuous intuition, 
for it is a spontaneous act of the power of representation ; and as, 
in order to distinguish this from sensibility, we must call it under- 
standing, we see that all connecting, whether we are conscious of 
it or not, and whether we connect the manifold of intuition or 
several concepts together, and again, whether that intuition be 
sensuous or not sensuous, is an act of the understanding. This 
act we shall call by the general name of synthesis, in order to 
show that we cannot represent to ourselves anything as connected 
in the object, without having previously connected it ourselves, 
and that of all representations connection is the only one which 
cannot be given through the objects, but must be carried out by 

744 



Supplement XIV 745 

the subject itself, because it is an act of its spontaneity. It can 
be easily perceived that this act must be originally one and the 
same for every kind of connection, and that its dissolution, that is, 
the analysis, which seems to be its opposite, does always presup- 
pose it. For where the understanding has not previously con- 
nected, there is nothing for it to disconnect, because, as connected, 
it could only be given by the understanding to the faculty of 
representation. 

But the concept of connection includes, besides the concept of 
the manifold and the synthesis of it, the concept of the unity of 
the manifold also. Connection is representation of the synthetical 
unity of the manifold. 1 

The representation of that unity cannot therefore be the result 
of the connection ; on the contrary, the concept of the connection 
becomes first possible by the representation of unity being added 
to the representation of the manifold. And this unity, which pre- 
cedes a priori all concepts of connection, must not be mistaken for 
that category of unity of which we spoke on p. 68 ; for all cate- 
gories depend on logical functions in judgments, and in these we 
have already connection, and therefore unity of given concepts. 
The category, therefore, presupposes connection, and we must con- 
sequently look still higher for this unity as qualitative (see Suppl. 
XII. § 12), in that, namely, which itself contains the ground for 
the unity of different concepts in judgments, that is, the ground 
for the very possibility of the understanding, even in its logical 
employment. 

§ 16 

The Original Synthetical Unity of Apperception 

It must be possible that the / think should accompany all my 
representations : for otherwise something would be represented 

1 Whether the representations themselves are identical, and whether there- 
fore one can be thought analytically by the other, is a matter of no consequence 
here. The consciousness of the one has always to be distinguished from the 
consciousness of the other, so far as the manifold is concerned ; and everything 
here depends on the synthesis only of this (possible) consciousness. 



Supplement XIV 

within me that could not be thought, In other words, the repre- 
sentation would either be impossible or nothing, at least so fai as 
I am concerned. Thai representation which can be given before 

all thought, is called intuition, and all the manifold of intuition 
has therefore .1 necessarj relation to the / think in the same sub- 
ject in which that manif >ld of intuition is found. That representa- 
tion, however (that / flunk), is an act of spontaneity, that is, it 
cannot be considered as belonging to sensibility. 1 call it pure 
a/perception, in order to distinguish it from empirical appercep- 
il apperception also, because it is that self-conscious- 

\iiich by producing the representation, / think (which must 
accompany all others, and i^ one and the same in every act of 
consci . cannot itself be accompanied by any other. I 

also call the unity of it the transcendental unity of self-conscious- 

a order to indicate that it contains the possibility of know- 

a priori. 
for the manifold representations given in any intuition would 
not all be my representations, if they did not all belong to one 
self-consciousness. What 1 mean i> that, as my representations 
(even though I am not conscious of them as such), they must 
be in accordance with that condition, under which alone they 
can stand together in one common self-consciousness, because 
otherwise they would not all belong to me. From this orig- 
inal connection the following important conclusions can be 
deduced. 

The unbroken identity of apperception of the manifold that is 
given in intuition contains a synthesis of representations, and is 
possible only through the consciousness of that synthesis. The 
empirical consciousness, which accompanies various representa- 
tions, is itself various and disunited, and without reference to the 
identity of the subject. Such a relation takes place, not by my 
simply accompanying every relation with consciousness, but by 
my adding one to the other and being conscious of that act of 
adding, that is, of that synthesis. Only because I am able to con- 
nect the manifold of given representations in one co?isciousness, is 
it possible for me to represent to myself the identity of the con- 
sciousness in these representations, that is, only under the supposi- 



Supplement XIV 747 

tion of some synthetical unity of apperception does the analytical 
unity of apperception become possible. 1 ' 

The thought that the representations given in intuition belong 
all of them to me, is therefore the same as that I connect them in 
one self-consciousness, or am able at least to do so ; and though 
this is not yet the co?isciousness of the synthesis of representations, 
it nevertheless presupposes the possibility of this synthesis. In 
other words, it is only because I am able to comprehend the 
manifold of representations in one consciousness, that I call them 
altogether my representations, for otherwise, I should have as 
manifold and various a self as I have representations of which I 
am conscious. The synthetical unity of the manifold of intuitions 
as given a priori is therefore the ground also of the identity of that 
apperception itself which precedes a priori all definite thought. 
Connection, however, does never lie in the objects, and cannot be 
borrowed from them by perception, and thus be taken into the 
understanding, but it is always an act of the understanding, which 
itself is nothing but a faculty of connecting a prio?i, and- of bring- 
ing the manifold of given representations under the unity of apper- 
ception, which is, in fact, the highest principle of all human 
knowledge. 

It is true, no doubt, that this principle of the necessary unity of 
apperception is itself identical, and therefore an analytical proposi- 
tion ; but it shows, nevertheless, the necessity of a synthesis of the 

1 This analytical unity of consciousness belongs to all general concepts, as 
such. If, for instance, I think red in general, I represent to myself a property, 
which (as a characteristic mark) may he found in something, or can be con- 
nected with other representations ; that is to say, only under a presupposed 
possible synthetical unity can I represent to myself the analytical. A repre- 
sentation which is to be thought as common to different representations, is 
looked upon as belonging to such as possess, besides it. something different. 
It must therefore have been thought in synthetical unity with other (though 
only possible) representations, before I can think in it that analytical unity of 
consciousness which makes it a coneeptus communis. The synthetical unity 
of apperception is, therefore, the highest point with which all employment of 
the understanding, and even the whole of logic, and afterwards the whole of 
transcendental philosophy, must be connected; ay, that faculty is the under- 
standing itself. 



748 Supplement XIV 

manifold which is given in intuition, without which synthesis it 
would be impossible to think the unbroken identity of self-con- 
sciousness. For through the Ego, as a simple representation, 
nothing manifold is given ; in the intuition, which is different from 
that, it can he given only, and then, by connection^ he thought in 
one consciousness. An understanding in which, by its self-con- 
sciousness, all the manifold would he given at the same time, would 
possess intuition; our understanding can do nothing but think, 
and must seek for its intuition in the senses. I am conscious, 
therefore, of the identical self with respect to the manifold of the 
representations, which are given to me in an intuition, because 
I call them, altogether, my representations, as constituting o?ie. 
This means, that I am conscious of a necessary synthesis of them 
a priori, which is called the original synthetical unity of appercep- 
tion under which all representations given to me must stand, but 
have to be brought there, first, by means of a synthesis. 

§'7 

The Principle of the Synthetical Unit}' of Apperception is the 

Highest Principle of all Employment of the Understanding 

The highest principle of the possibility of all intuition, in rela- 
tion to sensibility, was, according to the transcendental ^Esthetic, 
that all the manifold in it should be subject to the formal condi- 
tions of space and time. The highest principle of the same possi- 
bility in relation to the understanding is, that all the manifold in 
intuition must be subject to the conditions of the original syn- 
thetical unity of apperception. 1 

All the manifold representations of intuition, so far as they 

1 Space and time, and all portions thereof, are intuitions, and consequently 
single representations with the manifold of their content. (See the transcen- 
dental ^Esthetic.) They are not, therefore, mere concepts, through which the 
same consciousness, as existing in many representations, but intuitions through 
which many representations are brought to us, as contained in one and in its 
consciousness; this latter, therefore, is compounded, and those intuitions repre- 
sent the unity of consciousness as synthetical, but yet as primitive. This char- 
acter of singleness in them is practically of great importance (see § 25). 



Supplement XIV 749 

are given us, are subject to the former, so far as they must admit 
of being connected in one consciousness, to the latter ; and with- 
out that nothing can be thought or known by them, because the 
given representations would not share the act of apperception (I 
think) in common, and could not be comprehended in one self- 
consciousness. 

The understanding in its most general sense is the faculty of 
cognitions. These consist in a definite relation of given repre- 
sentations to an object ; and an object is that in the concept of 
which the manifold of a given intuition is connected. All such 
connection of representations requires of course the unity of the 
consciousness in their synthesis : consequently, the unity of con- 
sciousness is that which alone constitutes the relation of repre- 
sentations to an object, that is, their objective validity, and 
consequently their becoming cognitions, so that the very possi- 
bility of the understanding depends on it. 

The first pure cognition of the understanding, therefore, on 
which all the rest of its employment is founded, and which at the 
same time is entirely independent of all conditions of sensuous 
intuition, is this very principle of the original synthetical unity 
of apperception. Space, the mere form of external sensuous 
intuition, is not yet cognition : it only supplies the manifold of 
intuition a priori for a possible cognition. In order to know 
anything in space, for instance, a line, I must draw it, and pro- 
duce synthetically a certain connection of the manifold that is 
given, so that the unity of that act is at the same time the unity 
of the consciousness (in the concept of a line), and (so that) an 
object (a determinate space) is then only known for the first 
time. The synthetical unity of consciousness is, therefore, an ob- 
jective condition of all knowledge ; a condition, not necessary for 
myself only, in order to know an object, but one to which each 
intuition must be subject, in order to become an object for me, 
because the manifold could not become connected in one con- 
sciousness in any other way, and without such a synthesis. 

No doubt, that proposition, as I said before, is itself analytical, 
though it makes synthetical unity a condition of all thought, for it 
really says no more than that all my representations in any given 



750 Supplement XIV 

intuition must be subject to the condition under which alone I 
can ascribe them, as my representations, to the identical self, and 
therefore comprehen 1 them, as synthetically connected, in one 
apperception through the general expression, / think. 

And yet this need not he a principle for every possible under- 
standing, but only for that which gives nothing manifold through 
its pure apperception in the representation, / am. An under- 
standing which through its self-consciousness could give the mani- 
fold of intuition, and by whose representation the objects of that 
representation should at the same time exist, would not require a 
special act of the synthesis of the manifold for the unity of its con- 
mess, while the human understanding, which possesses the 
power of thought only, hut not of intuition, requires such an act. 
To tiie human understanding that first principle is so indispen- 
sable that it really cannot form the least concept of any other pos- 
sible understanding, whether it be intuitive by itself, or possessed 
of a sensuous intuition, different from that in space and time. 



§ i ^ 

What is the Objective Unity of Self-consciousness ? 

The transcendental unity of apperception connects all the mani- 
fold given in an intuition into a concept of an object. It is there- 
fore called objective, and must be distinguished from the subjective 
unity of consciousness, which is a form of the internal sense, by 
which the manifold of intuition is empirically given, to be thus 
connected. Whether I can become empirically conscious of the 
manifold, as either simultaneous or successive, depends on cir- 
cumstances, or empirical conditions. The empirical unity of con- 
sciousness, therefore, through the association of representations, 
is itself phenomenal and wholly contingent, while the pure form of 
intuition in time, merely as general intuition containing the mani- 
fold that is given, is subject to the original unity of the conscious- 
ness, through the necessary relation only of the manifold of intui- 
tion to the one, / think, — that is, through the pure synthesis of 
the understanding, which forms the a priori ground of the empiri- 



Supplement XIV 751 

cal synthesis. That unity alone is, therefore, valid objectively ; 
the empirical unity of apperception, which we do not consider 
here, and which is only derived from the former, under given 
conditions in concrete, has subjective validity only. One man 
connects the representation of a word with one thing, another with 
another, and the unity of consciousness, with regard to what is 
empirical, is not necessary nor universally valid with reference to 
that which is given. 

§ 19 

The Logical Form of all Judgments consists in the Objective Unity 
of Apperception of the Concepts contained therein 

I could never feel satisfied with the definition of a judgment in 
general, given by our logicians, who say that it is the representation 
of a relation between two concepts. Without disputing with them 
in this place as to the defect of that explanation, that it may pos- 
sibly apply to categorical, but not to hypothetical and disjunctive 
judgments (the latter containing, not a relation of concepts, but 
of judgments themselves), — though many tedious consequences 
have arisen from this mistake of logicians, — I must at least make 
this observation, that we are not told in what that relation con- 
sists. 1 

But, if I examine more closely the relation of given cognitions 
in every judgment, and distinguish it, as belonging to the under- 
standing, from the relation according to the rules of reproductive 
imagination (which has subjective validity only), I find that a 
judgment is nothing but the mode of bringing given cognitions 

1 The lengthy doctrine of the four syllogistic figures concerns categorical 
syllogisms only, and though it is really nothing but a trick for obtaining the 
appearance of more modes of concluding than that of the first figure, by 
secretly introducing immediate conclusions (consequentiae immediatae) among 
the premisses of a pure syllogism, this would hardly have secured it- 
success, had not its authors succeeded, at the same time, in establishing the 
exclusive authority of categorical judgments, as those to which all others must 
be referred. This as we showed in § 9, p. 62, is wrong. 



752 Supplement XIV 

into the objective unity of apperception. This is what is intended 
by the copula is, which is meant to distinguish the objective unity 
of given representations from the subjective. It (the copula is) 
indicates their relation to the original apperception, and their 
necessary unify, even though the judgment itself be empirical, and 
therefore contingent ; as, for instance, bodies are heavy. By this 
1 do not mean to say that these representations belong necessarily 
to each other, in the empirical intuition, but that they belong to 
each other by means of the necessary unity of apperception in the 
synthesis of intuitions, that is, according to the principles of the 
objective determination of all representations, so far as any cogni- 
tion is to arise from them, these principles being all derived from 
the principle of the transcendental unity of apperception. Thus, 
and thus alone, does the relation become a judgment, that is, a 
relation that is valid objectively, and can thus be kept sufficiently 
distinct from the relation of the same representations, if it has 
subjective validity only, for instarfce, according to the laws of 
association. In the latter case, I could only say, that if I carry a 
body I feel the pressure of its weight, but not, that it, the body, is 
heavy, which is meant to say that these two representations are 
connected together in the object, whatever the state of the sub- 
ject may be, and not only associated or conjoined in the percep- 
tion, however often it may be repeated. 



§ 20 

All Sensuous Intuitions are subject to the Catego?'ies as to Condi- 
tions under ivhich alone their Manifold Contents can come 
together i?i one Consciousness 

The manifold which is given us in a sensuous intuition is 
necessarily subject to the original synthetical unity of appercep- 
tion, because by it alone the unity of intuition becomes possible 
(§7). That act of the understanding, further, by which the 
manifold of given representations (whether intuitions or concepts) 
is brought under one apperception in general, is the logical func- 
tion of a judgment (§ 19). The manifold, therefore, so far as it 



Supplemejit XIV 753 

is given in an empirical intuition, is determined with regard to 
one of the logical functions of judgment, by which, indeed, it is 
brought to consciousness in general. The categories, however, are 
nothing but these functions of judgment, so far as the manifold of 
a given intuition is determined with respect to them (§ 13, see 
p. 84). Therefore the manifold in any given intuition is naturally 
subject to the categories. 

§21 
Note 

The manifold, contained in an intuition which I call my own, 
is represented through the synthesis of the understanding, as be- 
longing to the necessary unity of self-consciousness, and this takes 
place through the category. 1 

This category indicates, therefore, that the empirical conscious- 
ness of the manifold, given in any intuition, is subject to a pure 
self-consciousness a priori, in the same manner as the, empirical 
intuition is subject to a pure sensuous intuition which likewise 
takes place a priori. 

In the above proposition a beginning is made of a deduction 
of the pure concepts of the understanding. In this deduction, 
as the categories arise in the understanding only, independent of 
all sensibility, I ought not yet to take any account of the manner 
in which the manifold is given for an empirical intuition, but attend 
exclusively to the unity which, by means of the category, enters 
into the intuition through the understanding. In what follows 
(§ 26) we shall show, from the manner in which the empirical 
intuition is given in sensibility, that its unity is no other than that 
which is prescribed by the category (according to § 20) to the 
manifold of any given intuition. Thus only, that is, by showing 
their validity a priori with respect to all objects of our senses, the 
purpose of our deduction will be fully attained. 

1 The proof of this rests on the represented unity of intuition, by which an 
object is given, and which always includes a synthesis of the manifold which is 
given for an intuition, and contains the relation of the latter to the unity of 
apperception. 
3C 



754 Supplement XI \ ' 

There is one thing, however, of which, in the above demonstra- 
tion, I could not make abstraction : namely, that the manifold for 
an intuition must be given antecedently to the synthesis of the 
understanding, and independently of it; — how, remains uncer- 
tain. For if I were to imagine an understanding, itself intuitive 
(for instance, a divine understanding, which should not represent 

to itself given object-, but produce them at once by his repre- 
sentation), the categories would have no meaning with respect to 
such cognition. They are merely rules tor an understanding whose 
whole power consists in thinking, that is. in the act of bringing the 
Synthesis of the manifold, which is given to it in intuition from 

elsewhere, to the unitj of apperception ; an understanding which 

therefore know- nothing by itself, but connects only and arranges 
the material for cognition, thai i-. the intuition which must be 
given to it by the object This peculiarity of our understanding 
of producing unity of appen eption <r priori by means of the cate- 
gories only, and again by such and so many, cannot be further 
explained, any more than why we have these and no other func- 
tions of judgment, and why time and space are the only forms of 
a possible intuition for us. 

> 22 

The Category admits of no other Employment for the Cognition of 
Things, but its Application to Objects of Experience 
We have seen that to think an object is not the same as to 
know an object. In order to know an object, we must have the 
concept by which any object is thought (the category), and like- 
wise the intuition by which it is given. If no corresponding in- 
tuition could be given to a concept, it would still be a thought, 
so far as its form is concerned : but it would be without an object, 
and no knowledge of anything would be possible by it, because, 
so far as I know, there would be nothing, and there could be 
nothing, to which my thought could be referred. Now the only 
possible intuition for us is sensuous (see ^Esthetic) ; the thought 
of any object, therefore, by means of a pure concept of the under- 
standing, can with us become knowledge only, if it is referred to 



Supplement XIV 755 

objects of the senses. Sensuous intuition is either pure (space 
and time), or empirical, i.e. if it is an intuition of that which is 
represented in space and time, through sensation as immediately 
real. By means of pure intuition we can gain knowledge a priori 
of things as phenomena (in mathematics), but only so far as their 
form is concerned ; but whether there are things which must be 
perceived, according to that form, remains unsettled. Mathe- 
matical concepts, by themselves, therefore, are not yet knowledge, 
except under the supposition that there are things which admit of 
being represented by us, according to the form of that pure sensu- 
ous intuition only. Consequently, as things in space and time are 
only given as perceptions (as representations accompanied by sen- 
sations), that is, through empirical representations, the pure con- 
cepts of the understanding, even if applied to intuitions a priori, 
as in mathematics, give us knowledge in so far only as these pure 
intuitions, and therefore through them the concepts of the under- 
standing also, can be applied to empirical intuitions. Conse- 
quently the categories, by means of intuition, do not give us any 
knowledge of things, except under the supposition of their possi- 
ble application to empirical intuition; they serve, in short, for the 
possibility of empirical knowledge only, which is called experience. 
From this it follows that the categories admit of no other employ- 
ment for the cognition of things, except so far only as these are 
taken as objects of possible experience. 

§23 

The foregoing proposition is of the greatest importance, for it 
determines the limits of the employment of the pure concepts 
of the understanding with reference to objects, in the same man- 
ner as the transcendental Esthetic determined the limits of the 
employment of the pure form of our sensuous intuition. Space 
and time are conditions of the possibility of how objects can be 
given to us, so far only as objects of the senses, therefore of 
experience, are concerned. Beyond these limits they represent 
nothing, for they belong only to the senses, and have no reality 
beyond them. Pure concepts of the understanding arc free from 



756 Supplement XIV 

this limitation, and extend to objects of intuition in general, 
whether that intuition be like our own or not, if only it is sensu- 
ous and not intellectual. This further extension, however, of con- 
cepts beyond our sensuous intuition, is of no avail to us; for they 
.uc in that case empty concepts of objects, and the concepts do 
not even enable us to say, whether such objects be possible or not. 
They are mere forms Of thought, without Objective reality : because 
we have no intuition at hand to which the synthetical unity of apper- 
ception, which is contained in the concepts alone, could be applied, 
so that they might determine an object. Nothing can give them 
sense and meaning, except our sensuous and empirical intuition. 
If. therefore, we assume an object of a non-sensuous intuition 

as given, we may, no doubt, determine it through all the predi- 
cates, which follow from the supposition that nothing belonging 

to sensuous intuition belongs to it, that, therefore, it is not extended, 
or not in space, that its duration is not time, that no change 
(succession of determinations in time) is to be met in it, etc. 
but we can hardly (all this knowledge, if we only indicate how 
the intuition of an object is not, without being able to say what is 
contained in it, for, in that case, I have not represented the possi- 
bility of an object, corresponding to my pure concept of the 
understanding, because I could give no intuition corresponding 
to it, but could only say that our intuition did not apply to it. 
but what is the most important is this, that not even a single 
category could be applied to such a thing ; as, for instance, the 
concept of substance, that is, of something that can exist as a 
subject only, but never as a mere predicate. For I do not know 
whether there can be anything corresponding to such a determi- 
nation of thought, unless empirical intuition supplies the case for 
its application. Of this more hereafter. 

§ 2 4 
Of the Application of the Categories to Objects of the Senses in 

Genei'al 
The pure concepts of the understanding refer, through the mere 
understanding, to objects of intuition, whether it be our own, or any 



Supplement XIV 757 

other, if only sensuous intuition, but they are, for that very reason, 
mere forms of thought, by which no definite object can be known. 
The synthesis, or connection of the manifold in them, referred 
only to the unity of apperception, and became thus the ground 
of the possibility of knowledge a priori, so far as it rests on the 
understanding, and is therefore not only transcendental, but also 
purely intellectual. Now as there exists in us a certain form of 
sensuous intuition a priori, which rests on the receptivity of the 
faculty of representation (sensibility), the understanding, as 
spontaneity, is able to determine the internal sense through the 
manifold of given representations, according to the synthetical 
unity of apperception, and can thus think synthetical unity of 
the apperception of the manifold of sensuous intuition a priori, as 
the condition to which all objects of our (human) intuition must 
necessarily be subject. Thus the categories, though pure forms of 
thought, receive objective reality, that is, application to objects 
which can be given to us in intuition, but as phenomena only ; for 
it is with reference to them alone that we are capable of intuition 
a priori. 

This synthesis of the manifold of sensuous intuition, which is 
possible and necessary a priori, may be called figurative {synthe- 
sis speciosd), in order to distinguish it from that which is thought 
in the mere category, with reference to the manifold of an intui- 
tion in general, and is called intellectual synthesis (synthesis 
intelleetualis). Both are transcendental, not only because they 
themselves are carried out a priori, but because they establish 
also the possibility of other knowledge a priori. 

But this figurative synthesis, if it refers to the original syntheti- 
cal unity of apperception only, that is, to that transcendental 
unity which is thought in the categories, must be called the tran- 
scendental synthesis of the faculty of imagination, in order thus 
to distinguish it from the purely intellectual synthesis. Imagina- 
tion is the faculty of representing an object even without its pres- 
ence in intuition. As all our intuition is sensuous, the faculty of 
imagination belongs, on account of the subjective condition under 
which alone it can give a corresponding intuition to the concepts 
of the understanding, to our sensibility. As, however, its synthesis 



758 Supplement XIV 

is an act of spontaneity, determining, and not, like the senses, 
determinable only, and therefore able to determine a priori the 
senses, so far as their form is concerned, according to the unity 
of apperception, the faculty of imagination is, so far, a faculty of 
determining our sensibility a priori, so that the synthesis of the 
intuitions, according to the categories, must be the transcendental 
synthesis of the /acuity of imagination. This is an effect, produced 
by the understanding on our sensibility, and the first application 
of it (and at the same time the ground of all others) to objects 
of the intuition which is only possible to us. As figurative, it is 
distinguished from the intellectual synthesis, which takes place by 
the understanding only, without the aid of the faculty of imagina- 
tion. In so far as imagination is spontaneity, I call it occasionally 
productive imagination: distinguishing it from the reproductive, 
which in its synthesis is subject to empirical laws only, namely, 
those of association, and which is of no help for the explanation 
of the possibility of knowledge a priori, belonging, therefore, to 
psychology, and not to transcendental philosophy. 

******** 

This is the proper place for trying to account for the paradox, 
which must have struck everybody in our exposition of the form 
of the internal sense (§ 6, see p. 28) j namely, how that sense 
represents to the consciousness even ourselves, not as we are by 
ourselves, but as we appear to ourselves, because we perceive 
ourselves only as we are affected internally. This seems to be 
contradictory, because we should thus be in a passive relation to 
ourselves ; and for this reason the founders of the systems of 
psychology have preferred to represent the internal sense as 
identical with the faculty of apperception, while we have carefully 
distinguished the two. 

What determines the internal sense is the understanding, and 
its original power of connecting the manifold of intuition, that is, 
of bringing it under one apperception, this being the very ground 
of the possibility of the understanding. As in us men the under- 
standing is not itself an intuitive faculty, and could not, even if 
intuitions were given in our sensibility, take them into itself, in 
order to connect, as it were, the manifold of its own intuition, the 



Supplement XIV 759 

synthesis of the understanding, if considered by itself alone, is 
nothing but the unity of action, of which it is conscious without 
sensibility also, but through which the understanding is able to 
determine that sensibility internally, with respect to the manifold 
which may be given to it (the understanding) according to the 
form of its intuition. The understanding, therefore, exercises its 
activity, under the name of a transcendental synthesis of the faculty 
of imagination, on the passive subject to which it belongs as a 
faculty, and we are right in saying that the internal sense is 
affected by that activity. The apperception with its synthetical 
unity is so far from being identical with the internal sense, that, as 
the source of all synthesis, it rather applies, under the name of 
the categories, to the manifold of intuitions in general, that is, to 
objects in general before all sensuous intuition ; while the internal 
sense, on the contrary, contains the mere form of intuition, but 
without any connection of the manifold in it, and therefore, as 
yet, no definite intuition, which becomes possible only through the 
consciousness of the determination of the internal sense by the 
transcendental act of the faculty of imagination (the synthetical 
influence of the understanding on the internal sense) which I have 
called the figurative synthesis. 

This we can always perceive in ourselves. We cannot think a 
line without drawing it in thought ; we cannot think a circle with- 
out describing it ; we cannot represent, at all, the three dimen- 
sions of space, without placing, from the same point, three lines 
perpendicularly on each other ; nay, we cannot even represent 
time, except by attending, during our drawing a straight line 
(which is meant to be the external figurative representation of 
time) to the act of the synthesis of the manifold only by which 
we successively determine the internal sense, and thereby to the 
succession of that determination in it. It is really motion, as the 
act of the subject (not as the determination of an object 1 ), there - 



1 Motion of an object in space does not belong to a pure science, con- 
sequently not to geometry, because the fact that a thing is moveable cannot 
be known a priori, but from experience only. Motion, however, considered 
as describing a space, is a pure apt of successive synthesis ol the manifold in 



Supplement XI I ' 

fore the synthesis (-if the manifold in space (abstraction being 
made of space, and our attention fixed on the act only by which 
wc determine the internal cording to its form), which 

first produces the very concept of succession. The understanding 
uot, therefore, find in the internal sense such a connection 
of the manifold, bvX produces it by affecting the internal sense. It 

may seem difficult to understand how the thinking ego can be 
different from the ego which sees or perceives itself (other modi's 
of intuition being at least conceivable), and yet identical with 
the latter as the s.une subject, and how, therefore, I Can say: I, 
as intelligence and thinking subject, know myself as an object 
- i far .is being given to myself in intuition also, but like 
other phenomena, not as I am to the understanding, but only as 
I appear to myself In reality, however, this is neither more nor 
less difficult than how I can be, to myself, an object, and, more 

especially, an object of intuition and of internal perceptions. but 
that this must really be SO, can clearly be shown — if only we 
admit space to Ik- merely a pure form of the phenomena of the 
external senses — by the fact that we cannot represent to our- 
selves time, which is no object of external intuition, in any other 
way than under the image of a line which we draw, a mode of 
representation without which we could not realise the unity of its 
dimension ; or again by this other fact that we must always derive 
the determination of the length of time, or of points of time for 
all our internal perceptions, from that which is represented to us 
as changeable by external things, and have therefore to arrange 
the determinations of the internal sense as phenomena in time, in 
exactly the same way in which we arrange the determinations of 
the external senses in space. If, then, with regard to the latter, 
we admit that by them we know objects so far only as we are 
affected externally, we must also admit, with regard to the in- 
ternal sense, that by it we only are, or perceive ourselves, as we 
are internally affected by ourselves, in other words, that with 



external intuition in general by means of productive imagination, and belongs 
therefore, by right, not only to geometry, but even to transcendental philos- 
ophy. 



Supplement XIV 761 

regard to internal intuition we know our own self as a phenome- 
non only, and not as it is by itself. 1 



§25 

In the transcendental synthesis, however, of the manifold of 
representations in general, and therefore in the original syntheti- 
cal unity of apperception, I am conscious of myself, neither as I 
appear to myself, nor as I am by myself, but only that I am. 
This representation is an act of thought, not of intuition. Now, 
in order to know ourselves, we require, besides the act of think- 
ing, which brings the manifold of every possible intuition to the 
unity of apperception, a definite kind of intuition also by which 
that manifold is given, and thus, though my own existence is not 
phenomenal (much less a mere illusion), yet the determination 
of my existence 2 can only take place according to the form of 
the internal sense, and in that special manner in which the mani- 
fold, which I connect, is given in the internal intuition. This 
shows that I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but only as I 

1 I do not see how so much difficulty should be found in admitting that the 
internal sense is affected by ourselves. Every act of attention gives us an in- 
stance of it. In such an act the understanding always determines the internal 
sense, according to the connection which it thinks, to such an internal intuition 
as corresponds to the manifold in the synthesis of the understanding. How 
much the mind is commonly affected thereby anybody will be able to perceive 
in himself. 

2 The / think expresses the act of determining my own existence. What 
is thus given is the existence, but what is not yet given, is the manner in 
which I am to determine it, that is, in which I am to place within me the 
manifold belonging to it. For that purpose self-intuition is required, which 
depends on an a priori form, that is, on time, which is sensuous, and belongs 
to our receptivity of what is given to us as determinable. If, then, I have not 
another self-intuition which, likewise before the act of determination, gives the 
determining within me, of the spontaneity of which I am conscious only, as 
time gives the determinable, 1 cannot determine my existence as that of a 
spontaneously acting being, but I only represent to myself the spontaneity of 
my thinking, that is, of the act of determination, my existence remaining sen- 
suous only, that is, determinable, as the existence of a phenomenon. It is, 
however, on account of this spontaneity that I call myself an intelligence. 



Supplement XIV 

ippear to myself. The consciousness of oneself is therefore very 
far from being a knowledge of oneself, Id spite of all the cate- 
\ which constitute the thinking of an object in general, by 
means of the connection of the manifold in an apperception. As 
for the knowledge of an object different from myself I require, 
besides the thinking of an object in general (in a category), an 
intuition also, to determine that general concept, 1 require for the 
knowledge of my own self, besides consciousness, or besides my 
thinking myself, an intuition also of the manifold in me, to deter- 
mine that thought I exist, therefore, as su< h an intelligence, 
which is simply conscious of its power of connection, but with 

respect to the manifold that has to be connected, is subject to a 

Limiting condition which is called the internal sense, according to 
which that connection can only become pen eptible in relations of 

time, which lie entirely outside the concepts of the understanding. 

Such an intelligence, th< in only know itself as it appears 

to itself in an intuition (which cannot be intellectual and given 
by the understanding itself), and not as it would know itself, if its 
intuition were intellectual. 

§26 

Transcendental Deduction of the Universally Possible Employment 
of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding in Experience 

In the metaphysical deduction of the categories their a priori 
origin was proved by their complete accordance with the general 
logical functions of thought, while in their transcendental deduc- 
tion we established their possibility as knowledge a priori of 
objects of an intuition in general (§ 20, 21). Now we have to 
explain the possibility of our knowing a priori, by means of the 
categories, whatever objects may come before our senses, and this 
not according to the form of their intuition, but according to the 
laws of their connection, and of our thus, as it were, prescribing 
laws to nature, nay. making nature possible. Unless they were 
adequate to that purpose, we could not understand how every- 
thing that may come before our senses must be subject to laws 
which have their origin a prioii in the understanding alone. 



Supplement XIV 763 

First of all, I observe that by the synthesis of apprehension I 
understand the connection of the manifold in an empirical intui- 
tion, by which perception, that is, empirical consciousness of it 
(as phenomenal), becomes possible. 

We have forms of the external as well as the internal intuition 
a priori, in our representations of space and time : and to these 
the synthesis of the apprehension of the manifold in phenomena 
must always conform, because it can take place according to that 
form only. Time and space, however, are represented a priori, 
not only as forms of sensuous intuition, but as ifituitions them- 
selves (containing a manifold), and therefore with the determina- 
tion of the unity of that manifold in them (see transcendental 
Esthetic 1 ). Therefore unity of the synthesis of the manifold 
without or within us, and consequently a connection to which 
everything that is to be represented as determined in space and 
time must conform, is given a priori as the condition of the 
synthesis of all apprehension simultaneously with the intuitions, 
not in them, and that synthetical unity can be no other but that 
of the connection of the manifold of any intuition whatsoever in 
an original consciousness, according to the categories, only ap- 
plied to our sensuous intuition. Consequently, all synthesis, 
without which even perception would be impossible, is subject 
to the categories ; and as experience consists of knowledge by 
means of connected perceptions, the categories are conditions of 
the possibility of experience, and valid therefore a priori also for 
all objects of experience. 



1 Space, represented as an object (as required in geometry), contains more 
than the mere form of intuition, namely, the comprehension of the nanifold, 
which is given according to the form of sensibility, into a perceptible (intui- 
table) representation, so that the form of intuition gives the manifold only, 
while the formal intuition gives unity of representation. In the .Ksthetic I 
had simply ascribed this unity to sensibility, in order to show that it precedes 
all concepts, though it presupposes a synthesis not belonging to the senses, 
and by which all concepts of space and time become first possible. For as by 
that synthesis (the understanding determining the sensibility) space and time 
are first given as intuitions, the unity of that intuition a priori belongs t 
and time, and not to the concept of the understanding. (See § 24.) 



764 Supplement XIV 

If, for instance, I raise the empirical intuition of a house, 
Ji the apprehension of the manifold contained therein, into 
a perception, the necessary unity of space and of external sensuous 
intuition in general is presupposed, and I draw, as it were, the 
Bhape of the house according to that synthetical unity of the mani- 
fold in space. But this verj synthetical unity, if 1 make abstrac- 
tion ^( the form of space, lias ns seat in the understanding, and 
is in fact the category of the synthesis of the homogeneous in intui- 
tion in general : thai is, the category of quantity y to which that 
synthesis of apprehension, that is, the perception, must always 
< onform. 1 

( >r if. to take another example, I perceive the freezing of water, 
I apprehend two states (that of fluidity and that of solidity), and 
these as standing to each other in a relation of time. Hut in the 
time, which as internal intuition I make the foundation of the 
phenomenon, 1 represent to myself necessarily synthetical unity 
of the manifold, without which that relation could not he given as 
determined in an intuition (with reference to the succession of 
time). That synthetical unity, however, as a condition a pj-iori, 
under which I connect the manifold of any intuition, turns out to 
Uc^ if 1 make abstraction of the permanent form of my intuition, 
namely, af time, the category of cause, through which, if I apply 
it to my sensibility, I determine everything that happens, according 
to its relation in time. Thus the apprehension in such an event, 
and that event itself considered as a possible perception, is subject 
to the concept of the relation of cause and effect. The same 
applies to all other cases. 

******** 

Categories are concepts which a priori prescribe laws to all 
phenomena, and therefore to nature as the sum total of all phe- 
nomena (natura materialiter spectata). The question therefore 

1 In this manner it is proved that the synthesis of apprehension, which is 
empirical, must necessarily conform to the synthesis of apperception, which 
is intellectual, and contained in the category entirely a priori. It is one and 
the same spontaneity, which there, under the name of imagination, and here, 
under the name of understanding, brings connection into the manifold of 
intuition. 



Supplement XIV 765 

arises, as these laws are not derived from nature, nor conform to 
it as their model (in which case they would be empirical only), 
how we can understand that nature should conform to them, that 
is, how they can determine a priori the connection of the manifold 
in nature, without taking that connection from nature. The solu- 
tion of that riddle is this. 

It is no more surprising that the laws of phenomena in nature 
must agree with the understanding and its form a piiori, that is, 
with its power of connecting the manifold in general, than that the 
phenomena themselves must agree with the form of sensuous intui- 
tion a priori. For laws exist as little in phenomena themselves, 
but relatively only, with respect to the subject to which, so far as 
it has understanding, the phenomena belong, as phenomena exist 
by themselves, but relatively only, with respect to the same being 
so far as it has senses. Things by themselves would necessarily 
possess their conformity to the law, independent also of any under- 
standing by which they are known. But phenomena are only 
representations of things, unknown as to what they may be by 
themselves. As mere representations they are subject to no law 
of connection, except that which is prescribed by the connecting 
faculty. Now that which connects the manifold of sensuous intui- 
tion is the faculty of imagination, which receives from the under- 
standing the unity of its intellectual synthesis, and from sensibility 
the manifoldness of apprehension. Thus, as all possible percep- 
tions depend on the synthesis of apprehension, and that synthesis 
itself, that empirical synthesis, depends on the transcendental, and, 
therefore, on the categories, it follows that all possible perceptions, 
everything in fact that can come to the empirical consciousness, 
that is, all phenomena of nature, must, so far as their connection 
is concerned, be subject to the categories. On these categories, 
therefore, nature (considered as nature in general) depends, as on 
the original ground of its necessary conformity to law (as natura 
formaliter spectata). Beyond the laws, on which nature in gen- 
eral, as a lawful order of phenomena in space and time depends, 
the pure faculty of the understanding is incapable of prescribing 
a priori, by means of mere categories, laws to phenomena. Special 
laws, therefore, as they refer to phenomena which arc empirically 



Supplement XII ' 

determined, cannot be completely derived from the categories, 
although they are all subject to them. Experience must be super- 
added in order to know such special laws: while those Other a 

priori laws inform us only with regard to experience in general, 

and what can be known as an object oi it. 

Results of this Deduction of the Concepts of the Understanding 

We i annot thin* any object e* epl by means of the categories; 

tnnot know any subject that has been thought, except by 

means of intuitions, corresponding to those concepts. Now all 

our intuitions are sensuous, and this knowledge, so far as its object 

is gum. is empirical. But empirical knowledge is experience, and 
therefore no knowledge a priori is possible to us, except of objects 
of possible experience only. 1 

This knowledge, however, though limited to objects of expe- 
rience, i^ not, therefore, entirely derived from experience, for both 
the pure intuitions and the pure concepts of the understanding are 
elements of knowledge which exist m us a priori. Now there are 
only two ways in which a necessary harmony of experience with 
the concepts of its objects can be conceived ; either experience 
mikes these concepts possible, or these concepts make experience 
possible. The former will not hold good with respect to the 
categories (nor with pure sensuous intuition), for they are con- 
cepts a priori, and therefore independent of experience. To 
ascribe to them an empirical origin, would be to admit a kind 

1 Lest anybody should be unnecessarily frightened by the dangerous con- 
sequences of this proposition, I shall only remark tbat the categories are not 
limited for the purpose of thought by the conditions of our sensuous intuition, 
but have really an unlimited field. It is only the knowledge of that which we 
think, the determining of an object, that requires intuition, and even in the 
absence of intuition, the thought of the object may stih have its true and use- 
ful consequences, so far as the subjective use of reason is concerned. That use 
of reason, however, as it is not always directed to the determination of the 
object, that is, to knowledge, but also to the determination of the subject, and 
its volition, cannot be treated of in this place. 



Supplement XIV j6j 

of gene ratio aequivoca. There remains, therefore, the second alter- 
native only (a kind of system of the epigenesis of pure reason), 
namely, that the categories, on the part of the understanding, con- 
tain the grounds of the possibility of all experience in general. 
How they render experience possible, and what principles of the 
possibility of experience they supply in their employment on phe- 
nomena, will be shown more fully in the following chapter on the 
transcendental employment of the faculty of judgment. 

Some one might propose to adopt a middle way between the 
two, namely, that the categories are neither self-produced first 
principles a priori of our knowledge, nor derived from experience, 
but subjective dispositions of thought, implanted in us with our 
existence, and so arranged by our Creator that their employment 
should accurately agree with the laws of nature, which determine 
experience (a kind of system of preformation of pure reason). 
But, in that case, not only would there be no end of such an 
hypothesis, so that no one could know how far the supposition of 
predetermined dispositions to future judgments might be carried, 
but there is this decided objection against that middle course 
that, by adopting it, the categories would lose that necessity 
which is essential to them. Thus the concept of cause, which 
asserts, under a presupposed condition, the necessity of an effect, 
would become false, if it rested only on some subjective neces- 
sity implanted in us of connecting certain empirical representations 
according to the rule of causal relation. I should not be able to 
say that the effect is connected with the cause in the object (that 
is, by necessity), but only, I am so constituted that I cannot 
think these representations as connected in any other way. 
This is exactly what the sceptic most desires, for in that case all 
our knowledge, resting on the supposed objective validity of our 
judgments, is nothing but mere illusion, nor would there be want- 
ing people to say they know nothing of such subjective necessity 
(which can only be felt) ; and at all events we could not quarrel 
with anybody about what depends only on the manner in which 
his own subject is organised. 



768 Supplement XIV 

nprehensivt View of this Deduction 

The deduction Of the pure concepts of the understanding (and 
with them of all theoretical knowledge apriori) consists in repre- 
senting them as principles of the possibility of experience, and in 
representing experience as the determination of phenomena in 
space and time, — and. lastly, in representing that determination 
as depending on the principle of the original synthetical unity of 
apperception, as the form of the understanding, applied to space 
and time, as the original forms of -.t-n^il >ilit \ .' 



1 Kant does not carr) ti"- division mt<> paragraphs in bis second edition 

farther, be has to treat do • "t elementary concepts, 

ami prefers, in representing their employment, to adopt a continuous treat- 

ment, mthout paragraphs. 



SUPPLEMENT XV 

[See vol. ii. p. 143] 



All conjunction (conjunctio) is either composition (compositio) 
or connection {nexus). The former is the synthesis of a manifold 
the parts of which do not belong to each other necessarily. The 
two triangles, for instance, into which a square is divided by a 
diagonal, do by themselves not necessarily belong to each other. 
Such is also the synthesis of the homogeneous, in everything that 
can be considered mathematically, and that synthesis can be 
divided again into aggregation, and coalition, the former referring 
to extensive, the latter to intensive qualities. The latter conjunc- 
tion (nexus) is the synthesis of a manifold, in so for as its ele- 
ments belong to each other necessarily. Thus the accident 
belonging to a substance, or the effect belonging to a cause, 
though heterogeneous, are yet represented as a priori connected, 
which connection, as it is not arbitrary, I call dynamical, because 
it concerns the connection of the existence of the manifold. This 
may again be divided into the physical connection of phenomena 
among each other, and their metaphysical connection in the 
faculty of cognition a priori. (This forms a note in the 2nd 
Edition.) 



3D 



769 



SUPPLEMENT XVI. 

[See wl. ii. p, 143J 



In the 2ml Edition the title is 

I 

Axioms 01 Intuition 

Their print iple is ■ All intuitions are extrusive quantities. 

Proof 

A 1 1. phenomena contain, bo fax as their form is concerned, an 

intuition in Bpai e and time, which forms the a priori foundation 

of all of them. They cannot, therefore, be apprehended, that is, 
received into empirical consciousness, except through the synthe- 
sis of the manifold, by which the representations of a definite 
space or time are produced, i.e. through the synthesis of the 
homogeneous, and the consciousness of the synthetical unity of 
that manifold (homogeneous). Now the consciousness of the 
manifold and homogeneous in intuition, so far as by it the repre- 
sentation of an object is first rendered possible, is the concept of 
quantity (quantum). Therefore even the perception of an object 
as a phenomenon is possible only through the same synthetical 
unity of the manifold of the given sensuous intuition, by which 
the unity of the composition of the manifold and homogeneous is 
conceived in the concept of a quantity ; that is, phenomena are 
always quantities, and extensive quantities ; because as intuitions 
in space and time, they must be represented through the same 
synthesis through which space and time in general are determined. 

770 



SUPPLEMENT XVI b 

[See vol. ii. p. 147] 



II 

Anticipations of Perception 

Their principle is : In all phenomena the Real, which is the object 
of a sensation, has intensive quantity, that is, a degree. 

Proof 
Perception is empirical consciousness, that is, a consciousness 
in which there is at the same time sensation. Phenomena, as 
objects of perception, are not pure (merely formal) intuitions, 
like space and time (for space and time can never be perceived 
by themselves). They contain, therefore, over and above the 
intuition, the material for some one object in general (through 
which something existing in space and time is represented) ; that 
is, they contain the real of sensation, as a merely subjective repre- 
sentation, which gives us only the consciousness that the subject 
is affected, and which is referred to some object in general. Now 
there is a gradual transition possible from empirical to pure con- 
sciousness, till the real of it vanishes completely and there remains 
a merely formal consciousness {a priori) of the manifold in space 
and time ; and, therefore, a synthesis also is possible in the pro- 
duction of the quantity of a sensation, from its beginning, that is, 
from the pure intuition =0, onwards to any quantity of it. As 
sensation by itself is no objective representation, and as in it the 
intuition of neither space nor time can be found, it follows that 
though not an extensive, yet some kind of quantity must belong 
to it (and this through the apprehension of it, in which the em- 
pirical consciousness may grow in a certain time from nothing = o 
to any amount). That quantity must be intensive, and corre- 
sponding to it, an intensive quantity, i.e. a degree of influence 
upon the senses, must be attributed to all objects of perception, 
so far as it contains sensation. 

771 



SUPPLEMENT XVII 

[Sec vol. ii- p. 155] 



III 
A\\] OCT - "i EXH Kii 

Their principle is : Experience ia possible only through the 
representation of a necessary connection of perceptions. 

/'• 

is empirical knowledge, thai is, knowledge which 
determines an object by means of perceptions. It is, therefore, 
a synthesis of perceptions, which synthesis itself is not contained 
in the perception, but contains the synthetical unity of the mani- 
fold of the perceptions in a consciousness, that unity constituting 
the essentia] of our knowledge of the objects of the senses, i.e. of 
experience (not only of intuition or of sensation of th< 
In experience perceptions come together contingently only, so 
tint no ne >f their connection could be discovered in the 

perceptions the apprehension being only a composition of 

the manifold pf empirical intuition, but containing no representa- 
tion of the necessity of the connected existence, in space and time, 
of the phenomena which it places together. Experience, on the 
contrary, is a knowledge of objects by perceptions, in which there- 
fore the relation in the existence of the manifold is to be repre- 
sented, not as it is put together in time, but as it is in time, 
objectively. Now, as time itself cannot be perceived, the deter- 
mination of the existence of objects in time can take place only 
by their connection in time in general, that is, through concepts 
connecting them a p?'iori. As these concepts always imply neces- 
sity, we are justified in saying that experience is possible only 
through a representation of the necessary connection of percep- 
tions. 

772 






SUPPLEMENT XVIII 

[See vol. ii. p. 160] 



A. First Analogy 

Principle of the Permanence of Substance 

In all changes of phenomena the substance is permanent, and its 
quantum is neither increased nor diminished in nature. 

Proof 

All phenomena exist in time, and in it alone, as the substratum 
(as permanent form of the internal intuition), can simultaneousness 
as well as succession be represented. Time, therefore, in which 
all change of phenomena is to be thought, does not change, for it 
is that in which simultaneousness and succession can be repre- 
sented only as determinations of it. As time by itself cannot be 
perceived, it follows that the substratum which represents time in 
general, and in which all change or simultaneousness can be per- 
ceived in apprehension, through the relation of phenomena to it, 
must exist in the objects of perception, that is, in the phenomena. 
Now the substratum of all that is real, that is, of all that belongs to 
the existence of things, is the substance, and all that belongs to 
existence can be conceived only as a determination of it. Con- 
sequently the permanent, in reference to which alone all temporal 
relations of phenomena can be determined, is the substance in 
phenomena, that is, what is real in them, and, as the substratum of 
all change, remains always the same. As therefore substance- can- 
not change in existence, we were justified in saying that its quan- 
tum can neither be increased nor diminished in nature. 

773 



SUPPLEMENT XIX 

[ Sec vol. ii. j). 1 66] 



B. Si . ond Analogy 

Principle of the Succession of Time, according to the Law of 

Causality 

All changes takr place according to the law of connection between 
cause and effect. 

Proof 

( I r has been shown by the preceding principle, that all phenom- 
ena in the succession of time are changes only, i.e. a successive 
being and not-being of the determinations of the substance, which 
is permanent, and consequently that the being of the substance 
itself, which follows upon its not-being, and its not-being, which 
follows on its being, — in other words, that an arising or perish- 
ing of the substance itself is inadmissible. The same principle 
might also have been expressed thus : all change (succession) of 
phenomena consists in modificatio?i only, for arising and perishing 
are no modifications of the substance, because the concept of 
modification presupposes the same subject as existing with two 
opposite determinations, and therefore as permanent. After this 
preliminary remark, we shall proceed to the proof.) 

I perceive that phenomena succeed each other, that is, that 
there is a state of things at one time the opposite of which existed 
at a previous time. I am therefore really connecting two percep- 
tions in time. That connection is not a work of the senses only 
and of intuition, but is here the product of a synthetical power 
of the faculty of imagination, which determines the internal sense 

774 



Supplement XIX 775 

with reference to relation in time. Imagination, however, can 
connect those two states in two ways, so that either the one or 
the other precedes in time : for time cannot be perceived by 
itself, nor can we determine in the object empirically and with 
reference to time, what precedes and what follows. I am, there- 
fore, conscious only that my imagination pjaces the one before, 
the other after, and not, that in the object the one state comes 
before the other. In other words, the objective relation of phe- 
nomena following upon each other remains undetermined by mere 
perception. In order that this may be known as determined, it 
is necessary to conceive the relation between the two states in such 
a way that it should be determined thereby with necessity, which 
of the two should be taken as coming first, and which as second, 
and not conversely. Such a concept, involving a necessity of 
synthetical unity, can be a pure concept of the understanding only, 
which is not supplied by experience, and this is, in this case, the 
concept of the relation of cause and effect, the former determining 
the latter in time as the consequence, the cause not being some- 
thing that might be antecedent in imagination only, or might not 
be perceived at all. Experience itself, therefore, that is, an em- 
pirical knowledge of phenomena, is possible only by our subject- 
ing the succession of phenomena, and with it all change, to the 
law of causality, and phenomena themselves, as objects of experi- 
ence, are consequently possible according to the same law only. 



SUPPLEMENT XX 

: See vol. ii. p. 184] 



C. Third Anai i kj\ 

Principle • ttnce % according to the /.<i:i> of Reciprocity or 

( 'ommunity 

All substances, so far as they can be perceived as coexistent in 
space, arc always affecting ea< h other reciprocally. 

Proof 

Things are coexistent when, in empirical intuition, the percep- 
tion of the one can follow upon the perception of the other, and 
vice vers a , which, as was shown in the second principle, is impos- 
sible in the temporal succession of phenomena. Thus I may first 
observe the moon and afterwards the earth, or, conversely also, 
first the earth and afterwards the moon, and because the percep- 
tions of these objects can follow each other in both ways, I say 
that they are coexistent. Now coexistence is the existence of 
the manifold in the same time. Time itself, however, cannot be 
perceived, so that we might learn from the fact that things exist 
in the same time that their perceptions can follow each other 
reciprocally. The synthesis of imagination in apprehension would, 
therefore, give us each of these perceptions as existing in the sub- 
ject, when the other is absent, and vice versa : it would never tell 
us that the objects are coexistent, that is, that if the one is there, 
the other also must be there in the same time, and this by neces- 
sity, so that the perceptions may follow each other reciprocally. 
Hence we require a concept of understanding of the reciprocal 
sequence of determinations of things existing at the snme time, 

776 






Supplement XX jjj 

but outside each other, in order to be able to say, that the recip- 
rocal sequence of the perceptions is founded in the object, and 
thus to represent their coexistence as objective. The relation 
of substances, however, of which the first has determinations the 
ground of which is contained in the other, is the relation of in- 
fluence, and if, conversely also, the first contains the ground of 
determinations in the latter, the relation is that of community 
or reciprocity. Hence the coexistence of substances in space can- 
not be known in experience otherwise but under the supposition 
of reciprocal action : and this is therefore the condition also of 
the possibility of things themselves as objects of experience. 



SUPPLEMENT XXI 

[See vol. ii- )>• I97] 



An important protest, however, against these rules for proving 
ten e mediately is brought forward by Fdealism t and this is 
therefore the proper place for its refutation. 

• ••••••* 

A' >■<'!/■ n ■ ' Idealism 

OJSM (I mean material idealism) is the theory which de- 
clares the existence of objects in space, without us, as either 
doubtful only and not demonstrable, or a . false and impossible. 
The former i^ the problematical idealism of Descartes, who de- 
clares one empiri< al assertion only to be undoubted, namely, that 
of / am; the latter is the dogmatical idealism of Berkeley, who 
declart ind all things to which it belongs as an inseparable 

condition, as something impossible in itself, and, therefore, the 
things in space as mere imaginations. Dogmatic idealism is in- 
evitable, if we look upon space as a property belonging to things 
by themselves, for in that case space and all of which it is a con- 
dition, would be a non-entity. The ground on which that idealism 
rests has been removed by us in the transcendental y£sthe4;ic. 
Problematical idealism, which asserts nothing, but only pleads our 
inability of proving any existence except our own by means of 
immediate experience, is reasonable and in accordance with a 
sound philosophical mode of thought, which allows of no decisive 
judgment, before a sufficient proof has been found. The required 
proof will have to demonstrate that we may have not only an im- 
agination, but also an experience of external things, and this it 
seems can hardly be effected in any other way except by proving 
that even our internal experience, which Descartes considers as 

778 



SiLpplement XXI 



779 



undoubted, is possible only under the supposition of external 
experience. 

Theorem 

The simple, hit empirically detertnined Consciousness of my own 
existence, proves the Existence of objects in space outside 
7tiyself. 

Proof 
I am conscious of my own existence as determined in time, 
and all determination in time presupposes something permanent 
in the perception. 1 That permanent, however, cannot be an intui- 
tion within me, because all the causes which determine my exist- 
ence, so far as they can be found within me, are representations, 
and as such require themselves something permanent, different 
from them, in reference to which their change, and therefore my 
existence in time in which they change, may be determined. The 
perception of this permanent, therefore, is possible only through 
a thing outside me, and not through the mere representation of a 
thing outside me, and the determination of my existence in time 
is, consequently, possible only by the existence of real things, 
which I perceive outside me. Now, as the consciousness in time 
is necessarily connected with the consciousness of the possibility 
of that determination of time, it is also necessarily connected with 
the existence of things outside me, as the condition of the deter- 
mination of time. In other words, the consciousness of my own 
existence is, at the same time, an immediate consciousness of the 
existence of other things. 

Note i. — It will have been perceived that in the foregoing 
proof the trick played by idealism has been turned against it, 
and with greater justice. Idealism assumed that the only im- 
mediate experience is the internal, and that from it we can no 
more than infer external things, though in an untrustworthy man- 
ner only, as always happens if from given effects we infer definite 

1 This passage has been translated as amended by Kant himself in the 
Preface to the Second Edition (p. 386). 



780 Supplement XXI 

causes: it being quite possible that the cause of" the representa- 
tions, which are ascribed by us, it may be wrongly, to external 
things, may lie within ourselves. We, however, have proved that 
externa] experience is really immediate, 1 and that only by means 
of it, though not the consciousness of our own existence, yet its 
determination in tunc, that is, internal experience, becomes pos- 
sible. No <1 >ubt the representation of/am, which expresses the 
consciousness that can accompany all thought, is that which im- 
mediately includes the existence of a subject : but it docs not yet 
include a knowledge of it, and therefore no empirical knowledge, 
thai is, experience. For that we require, besides the thought of 
something existing, intuition also, and in this case internal intuition 

in respect to which, that is, to time, the subject must be deter- 
mined. For that purpose external objects are absolutely neces- 
sary, so that internal expciicm c itself is possible, mediately only, 

and through external experience. 

NOii 2. — This view is fullv confirmed by the empirical use of 
OUT faculty of knowledge, as applied to the determination of time. 
Not only are we unable to perceive any determination of time, 
except through a change in external relations (motion) with 
reference to what is permanent in space (for instance, the 
movement of the sun with respect to terrestrial objects), but we 
really have nothing permanent to which we could refer the con- 
cept of a substance, as an intuition, except matter only : and 
even its permanence is not derived from external experience, but 

1 The imtnediate consciousness of the existence of external things is not 
simply assumed in the preceding theorem, but proved, whether we can under- 
stand the possibility of this consciousness or not. The question with regard to 
that possibility would come to this, whether we have an internal sense only, 
and no external sense, but merely an external imagination. It is clear, how- 
ever, that, even in order to imagine only something as external, that is, to 
represent it to the senses in intuition, we must have an external sense, and 
thus distinguish immediately the mere receptivity of an external intuition from 
that spontaneity which characterizes every act of imagination. For merely to 
imagine an external sense would really be to destroy the faculty of intuition, 
which is to be determined by the faculty of imagination. 






Supplement XXI 781 

presupposed a priori as a necessary condition of all determination 
of time, and therefore also of 1 the determination of the internal 
sense with respect to our own existence through the existence of 
external things. The consciousness of myself, in the represen- 
tation of the ego, is not an intuition, but a merely intellectual 
representation of the spontaneity of a thinking subject. Hence 
that ego has not the slightest predicate derived from intuition, 
which predicate, as permanent, might serve as the correlate of 
the determination of time in the internal sense : such as is, for 
instance, impermeability in matter, as an empirical intuition. 

Note 3. — Because the existence of external objects is re- 
quired for the possibility of a definite consciousness of ourselves, 
it does not follow that every intuitional representation of external 
things involves, at the same time, their existence ; for such a rep- 
resentation may well be the mere effect of the faculty of imagi- 
nation (in dreams as well as in madness); but it can be such an 
effect only through the reproduction of former external percep- 
tions, which, as we have shown, is impossible without the reality 
of external objects. What we wanted to prove here was only 
that internal experience in general is possible only through exter- 
nal experience in general. Whether this or that supposed expe- 
rience be purely imaginary, must be settled according to its 
own particular determinations, and through a comparison with 
the criteria of all real experience. 

1 Read der instead of als. 



SUPPLEMENT XXII 

vol. ii. p. 



Note on the System of the Principles 

1 1 is something very remarkable that we cannot understand the 
possibility of anything from the category alone, but must always 
have an intuition in order to exhibit by it the objective reality of 
the pure concept of the understanding. Let us take, for instance, 

the categories of relation. It is impossible to understand, from 
mere < ODCeptS aloiu- : — 

/. how something can exist as subject only, and not as 

a mere determination of other things, that is, how it can be a sub' 
stance : or, 

ndfy t how, be< ause something is, something else must be, 
that is, how something can ever be a cause : or, 

Thirdly, how, when there are several things, something could 
follow from the existence of one of them as affecting the rest, and 
vice versa, so that there should exist, in this way, a certain com- 
munity of substances. The same applies to the other categories, 
as, for instance, how a thing could be of the same kind as many 
others, and thus be a quantity. So long as there is no intuition, 
we do not know whether by the categories we conceive an object, 
nay, whether any object can at all belong to them : and thus we 
see again that by themselves the categories are not knowledge, 
but mere forms of thought, by which given intuitions are turned 
into knowledge. 

It likewise follows from this, that no synthetical proposition can 
be made out of mere categories, as, for instance, if it is said that 
in everything existing there is substance, i.e. something that can 

782 



Supplement XXII 783 

exist as subject only, and not as a mere predicate ; or, everything 
is a quantum, etc. Here we have really nothing whatever which 
would enable us to go beyond a given concept, and to connect 
with it another. Hence no one has ever succeeded in proving 
a synthetical proposition by pure concepts of the understanding 
only : as, for instance, the proposition that everything which exists 
contingently, has a cause. All that could be proved was, that, 
without such a relation, we could not conceive the existence of 
what is contingent, that is, that we could not know a priori 
through the understanding the existence of such a thing ; from 
which it does not follow in the least that the same condition 
applies to the possibility of things themselves. If the reader will 
go back to our proof of the principle of causality, he will per- 
ceive that we could prove it of objects of possible experience 
only, by saying that everything which happens (every event) pre- 
supposes a cause. We could prove it only as the principle of the 
possibility of experience, that is, of the knowledge of an object, 
given in empirical intuition, but not by means of mere concepts. 
It is perfectly true, that nevertheless this proposition, that every- 
thing contingent must have a cause, carries conviction to every- 
body from mere concepts : but it should be observed, that in this 
case the concept of the contingent contains no longer the cate- 
gory of modality (as something the non-existence of which can 
be conceived), but that of relation (as something which can only 
exist as the consequence of something else). It thus becomes 
in reality an identical proposition, namely, that that which can 
exist as a consequence only has its cause. And thus, when we 
have to give examples of contingent existence, we have always 
recourse to changes, and not only to the possibility of conceiving 
the opposite} Change, however, is an event which, as such, is 

1 It is easy enough to conceive the non-existence of matter, but the ancients 
did not infer from this its contingency. Not even the change of being and nut- 
being of any given state of a thing, which constitutes all change, can prove the 
contingency of that state, as if from the reality of its opposite. The vest oi .1 
body, for instance, following on its motion, does not yet prove the contingency 
of that motion, because the former is the opposite of the latter. The opposite 
here is opposed to the other, not realiter, but logically only. In order to prove 



tpplement XXII 



le through a cause only, and the non-existence of which 
is therefore possible in itself. We thus mean by contingency, that 
something can exist as the effi mse onl) ; and it' there 

sumed to be contingent, it becomes .1 merely 
analytical proposition to say that it has a cause. 

• t is still in irkable, however, that, in order to under- 

stand the possibilit) of thin rding to the categories, and 

thus t< \Uty of the latter, we require not 

only intuitions, but alw nal intuitions. Thus, if we take, 

for instance, the pure con< epts of relation, we find tli.it : — 

■A in order to imething permanent in intuition, <<>r 

mbstance (and thus to show the 
tive reality of that < or* epl I, we require an intuition in space 
< ul matta 1 m determine anything as per- 

manent, wink- time, and th thing that exists in the 

interna] sense, is in ml flux. 

hJ/y, that in order to exhibit change > as the intuition corre- 
sponding to the concept of causality, we must use motion as< hange 
in space for our example, nay, can thus only gain an intuition of 
changes the possibility of which no pure understanding can ever 
conceive. Change is the connection or* contradictory opposites 
in the existence of one and the same thing. Now, how it is 
ble that from a given state another state, opposed to it, 

should arise in the same th:: < 1M comprehend with- 

out an example: nay, without an intuition, cannot even render 
it intelligible to itself. That intuition, however, is that of the 
motion of a point in space, the presence of which in different 
places (as a consequence of opposite determinations) gives us, 
for the first time, an intuition of change : so that, in order to 
make even internal changes afterwards conceivable to ourselves, 
we must make time, as the form of the internal sense, figuratively 
comprehensible to ourselves by means of a line, and the internal 



the contingency of the motion of a body, we should have to prove that instead 
of the motion at the antecedent point of time, it would have been possible for 
the body to have been at rest at that very time, not that it is at rest afterwards ; 

for in this case both opposites are quite consistent with each other. 



Supplement XXII 785 

change by means of the drawing of that line (motion): in other 
words, the successive existence of ourselves in different states, by 
means of an external intuition. The real reason of this lies in the 
fact that all change presupposes something permanent in intuition, 
in order that it may itself be perceived as change, while no per- 
manent intuition is to be found in the internal sense. 

Thirdly, and lastly, the category of community cannot, so far as 
its possibility is concerned, be conceived by mere reason alone : 
and the objective reality of that concept cannot therefore be 
possibly understood without intuition, and without external in- 
tuition in space. For how should we conceive the possibilitv 
that, when several substances exist, something (as an effect) 
could follow from the existence of one of them as affecting 
reciprocally the existence of the other, and that, therefore, 
because there is something in the former, something must also 
be in the latter, which, from the existence of the latter alone, 
could not be understood? For this is necessary to establish 
community, though it is utterly inconceivable among things, 
each of which completely isolates itself through its substantiality. 
Leibniz, therefore, as he attributed community to the substances 
of the world, as conceived by the understanding alone, required 
the interference of a Deity ; because, as he justly perceived, such 
community would have been inconceivable from the existence of 
such substances only. We, on the contrary, can render the possi- 
bility of such a communion (of substances as phenomena) per- 
fectly conceivable to ourselves, if we represent them to ourselves 
in space, that is, in external intuition. For space contains, even 
a priori, formal external relations, as conditions of the possibility 
of the real relations of action and reaction, that is, of community. 

It is easy to show, in the same manner, that the possibility of 
things as quanta, and therefore, the objective reality of the cate- 
gory of quantity, can be exhibited in external intuition only, and, 
by means of it alone, be afterwards applied to tin- internal sense. 
But, in order to avoid prolixity, I must leave it to the reflection 
of the reader to find the examples of this. 

The whole of these notes is of great importance, not only as 
confirming our previous refutation of idealism, 1 ut even m >re, 



786 Supplement XXII 

when we come to treat kA self-knowledge by mere internal con- 
sciousness, and the determination of cur own nature, without the 

help of external empirical intuitions, in order to show us the 

limits of the possibility of sin h knowledge. 

The last result of the whole of this section is therefore this: 
All prim iples o! the pure understanding are nothing more than 

</ priori print iples of the possibility of experience ; and to e* 
perience alone do all synthetical propositions </ priori relate : 
nay, their possibility itself rests entirely on that relation. 






SUPPLEMENT XXIII 

[See vol. ii. p. 213] 



In one word, none of these concepts admit of being authenti- 
cated, nor can their real possibility be proved, if all' sensuous 
intuition (the only one which we possess) is removed, and there 
remains in that case a logical possibility only, that is, that a con- 
cept (a thought) is possible. This, however, does not concern 
us here, but only whether the concept refers to an object and 
does therefore signify anything. 

787 



SUPPLEMENT XXIV 

\ul. ii. j). a 



Wi arc nu-t here by an illusion which is difficult to avoid. The 
do not depend in their origin on sensibility, like the 
forms of intuition, sp.i. v. and time, and seem, therefore, to admit 
of .m application extending beyond the objects of the 
But, «>n the- ntlu-r side, the) are nothing but forms oj thought, con- 
taining the logical faculty only of comprehending a priori in one 
consciousness the manifold that n in intuition, and they 

would then ike away the only intuition which is possi- 

ble tO US, have Mill less Significance than those pure sensuous 

by which at i, while a peculiar mode 

r understanding of connecting the manifold (unless that 

intuition, m which the manifold alone Can be given, is added). 

signifies nothing at all. 

Nevertheless, it seems to follow from our very concept, if we 
call certaii phenomena, beings of the senses, by dis- 

tinguishing between the mode of our intuition and the nature of 
those objects by them>elves, that we may take either the same 
objects in that latter capacity, though they cannot as such come 
before our intuition, or other possible things, which are not 
objects of our senses at all, and place them, as objects thought 
only by the understanding, in opposition to the former, calling 
them beings of the understanding (noumena). The question 
then arises, whether our pure concepts of the understanding do 
not possess some significance with regard to these so-called beings 
of the understanding, and constitute a mode of knowing them? 

At the very outset, however, we meet with an ambiguity which 
may cause great misapprehension. The understanding, by calling 

788 



Supplement XXIV 789 

an object in one aspect a phenomenon only, makes to itself, apart 
from that aspect, another representation of an object by itself and 
imagines itself able to form concepts of such an object. As, then, 
the understanding yields no other concepts but the categories, it 
supposes that the object in the latter aspect can be thought at 
least by those pure concepts of the understanding, and is thus 
induced to take the entirely indefinite concept of a being of the 
understanding, as of a something in general outside our sensibil- 
ity, as a definite concept of a being which we might know to a 
certain extent through the understanding. 

If by noumenon we mean a thing so far as it is not an object 
of our sensuous intuition, and make abstraction of our mode of 
intuition, it may be called a noumenon in a negative sense. If, 
however, we mean by it an object of a non-sensuous intuition, we 
admit thereby a peculiar mode of intuition, namely, the intellect- 
ual, which, however, is not our own, nor one of which we can 
understand even the possibility. This would be the noumenon in 
a positive sense. 

The doctrine of sensibility is at the same time the doctrine of 
noumena in their negative sense; that is, of things which the 
understanding must think without reference to our mode of intui- 
tion, and therefore, not as phenomena only, but as things by 
themselves, but to which, after it has thus separated them, the 
understanding knows that it must not, in this new aspect, apply 
its categories ; because these categories have significance only 
with reference to the unity of intuitions in space and time, and 
can therefore a priori determine that unity, on account of the 
mere ideality of space and time only, by means of general con- 
necting concepts. Where that unity in time cannot be found, 
i.e. in the noumenon, the whole use, nay, the whole significance 
of categories comes to an end : because even the possibility oi 
things that should correspond to the categories, would be unin- 
telligible. On this point I may refer the reader to what I have 
said at the very beginning of the general note to the previous 
chapter (Suppl. XXII). The possibility of a thing can never be 
proved from the fact that its concept is not self- contradictory, but 
only by being authenticated by an intuition corresponding to it. 



79Q 



Supplement XXIV 



[fi th( Lttempted to apply the categories to objects 

which are oot considered as phenomena, we should have to admit 
an intuition other than the sensuous, and thus the object would 
become a noumenon in a positive sense. As. however, such an 
intuition, namely, an intellectual one, is entirely beyond our 
faculty of knowledge, the use of the categories also can never 
reach beyond the limits of the objects of experience. Beings of 

the understanding correspond no doubt to beings of the senses, 
and there may be beings of the understanding to which our faculty 

of sensuous intuition has no relation at all ; but our concepts of 
the understanding, being forms of thought for our sensuous intui- 
tion only, do not reach ^<> far, and what is called by us a noume- 
non must be understood as such in a negative sense only. 









SUPPLEMENT XXV 

[See vol. ii. p. 223] 



We must not speak, as is often done, of an intellectual world, 
for intellectual and sensitive apply to knowledge only. That, how- 
ever, to which the one or the other mode of intuition applies, 
that is, the objects themselves, must, however harsh it may sound, 
be called intelligible or sensible. 

79i 



SUPPLEMENT XXVI 

See vol. ii. p. 293] 



METAPHYSIC has for the real object of its investigations three 
ideas only, God x Freedom > and Immortality; the second concept 
connected with the fir^t leading by necessity to the third as 
conclusion. Everything else treated by that s< ience is a means 

only in order to establish those ideas and their reality. Meta- 
physic does not require these ideas for the sake of natural 
science ; but in order to go beyond nature. A right insight into 
them would make theology, morality, and, by the union of both, 
religion also, therefore the highest objects of our existence, depend- 
ent on the speculative faculty of reason only, and on nothing 
else. In a systematical arrangement of those ideas the above 
order, being synthetical, would be the most appropriate ; but in 
their elaboration, which must necessarily come first, the analytical 
or inverse order is more practical, enabling us, by starting from 
what is given us by experience, namely, the study of the soul 
(psychology), and proceeding thence to the study of the world 
(cosmology), and lastly, to a knowledge of God (theology), to 
carry out the whole of our great plan in its entirety. 

792 



SUPPLEMENT XXVII 

[See vol. ii. p. 303] 



We shall therefore follow it with a critical eye through all the 
predicaments of pure psychology ; but we shall, for the sake of 
brevity, let their examination proceed uninterruptedly. 

The following general remark may at the very outset make us 
more attentive to this mode of syllogism. I do not know any 
object by merely thinking, but only by determining a given intui- 
tion with respect to that unity of consciousness in which all thought 
consists ; therefore, I do not know myself by being conscious of 
myself, as thinking, but only if I am conscious of the' intuition 
of myself as determined with respect to the function of thought. 
All modes of self-consciousness in thought are therefore by them- 
selves not yet concepts of understanding of objects (categories), 
but mere logical functions, which present no object to our thought 
to be known, and therefore do not present myself either as an 
object to be known. It is not a consciousness of the determining, 
but only that of the determinable self, that is, of my internal intui- 
tion (so far as the manifold in it can be connected in accordance 
with the general condition of the unity of apperception in thought) 
which forms the object. 

1. In all judgments I am always the determining subject only 
of the relation which constitutes the judgment. That I, who 
think, can be considered in thinking as subje c t only, and as some- 
thing not simply inherent in the thinking, as predicate, is an 
apodictical and even identical proposition; but it dots not mean 
that, as an object, I am a self-dependent being or a subs tunc. 
The latter would be saying a great deal, and requires for its sup- 
port data which are not found in the thinking, perhaps (so Kit as 

793 



794 Supplement XX VII 

I consider only the thinking subject as such) more than I shall 
ever find in it. 

2. That the Ego of apperception, and therefore the Ego in 
ever) ai t of thought, is a singular whi< h cannot be dissolved into 
a plurality <>! subjects, ami that it therefore signifies a logically 
simple subject, follows from the very concept of thinking, and is 
consequentl) an analytical proposition. But this does not mean 
that a thinking Eg ■ is a simple substance > which would indeed be 
a synthetical proposition. The concept of substance always re- 
lates t<> intuitions which, with me. cannot l>e other hut sensuous, 

and which therefore he completely outside the field of the under- 
standing and its thinking, which alone is intended here, when we 

Bay that the Egp % in thinking, is simple. It would indeed be 

■, if what elsewhere requires so great an effort, namely, to 

distinguish in what is given by intuition what is substance, and 

still more, whether that substance Can be simple (as in the ease 

of the component parts of matter), should in our case be given 
so readily in what is really the poorest of all representations, 
and. as it were, by an a< t ot revelation. 

3. The proposition of the identity of myself amidst the mani- 
fold of which I am conscious, likewise follows from the concepts 
themselves, and is therefore analytical ; but the identity of the 
subject of which, in all its representations, I may become con- 
scious, does not refer to the intuition by which it is given as an 
object, and cannot therefore signify the identity of the person, 
by which is understood the consciousness of the identity of one's 
own substance, as a thinking l>eing, in all the changes of cireu in- 
stances. In order to prove this, the mere analysis of the propo- 
sition, I think, would avail nothing : but different synthetical 
judgments would be required, which are based on the given 
intuition. 

4. To say that I distinguish my own existence, as that of a 
thinking being, from other things outside me (one of them being 
my body) is likewise an analytical proposition ; for other things 
are things which I conceive as diffe?-ent from myself. But, whether 
such a consciousness of myself is even possible without things 
outside me, whereby representations are given to me, and whether 



Supplement XXVII 795 

I could exist merely as a thinking being (without being a man), 
I do not know at all by that proposition. 

Nothing therefore is gained by the analysis of the conscious- 
ness of myself, in thought in general, towards the knowledge of 
myself as an object. The logical analysis of thinking in general 
is simply mistaken for a metaphysical determination of the 
object. 

It would be a great, nay, even the only objection to the whole 
of our critique, if there were a possibility of proving a p7'iori that 
all thinking beings are by themselves simple substances, that as 
such (as a consequence of the same argument) personality is in- 
separable from them, and that they are conscious of their exist- 
ence as distinct from all matter. For we should thus have made 
a step beyond the world of sense and entered into the field of 
noumena, and after that no one could dare to question our right 
of advancing further, of settling in it, and, as each of us is 
favoured by luck, taking possession of it. The proposition that 
every thinking being is, as such, a simple substance, is synthetical 
a priori, because, first, it goes beyond the concept on which it rests, 
and adds to act of thinking in general the mode of existence ; and 
secondly, because it adds to that concept a predicate (simplicity) 
which cannot be given in any experience. Hence synthetical 
propositions a priori would be not only admissible, as we main- 
tained, in reference to objects of possible experience, and then 
only as principles of the possibility of that experience, but could 
be extended to things in general and to things by themselves, a 
result which would put an end to the whole of our critique, and 
bid us to leave everything as we found it. However, the danger 
is not so great, if only we look more closely into the matter. 

In this process of rational psychology, there lurks a paralogism, 
which may be represented by the following syllogism. 

That which cannot be conceived otherwise than as a subject, 
does not exist otherwise than as a subject, and is therefore a 
substance. 

A thinking being, considered as such, cannot be conceived 
otherwise than as a subject. 

Therefore it exists also as such only, that is. as .1 substance. 



Supplement XXI 71 

In tin- major they -peak of a being that can be thought in 
ever) respect, and therefore also as it may be given in intuition. 
In the minor, however, they speak of it only so far as it considers 
itself, as subject, with respect to the thinking and the unity of 
« nw^ iousness only, but not at the same tunc in respect to the 
intuition whereb) this unity Is given as an object of thinking, 
rhe conclusion, therefore, has been drawn bj a sophism, and more 
especially by xoph Uetionis} 

■ we arc perfe t!y right in thus resolving that famous argu- 
ment into a paralogism, will be clearly seen by referring to the 

1 note on the systematica] representation of the principles, 

and to the section on the noumena, for it has been proved there 

that tiie com ept of a thing, whi< h < aw exist by itself as a subject, 

and nut as a mere predicate, I irries as \ et no objective reality, 
that i>, that we cannot know whether any object at all belongs to 
it, it being impossible tor us to understand the possibility of such 
a mode of existence. It yields us therefore no knowledge at all. 

,.t i> to indicate, under tin- name of a. substance, an 

object that < m\ be given, and thus heroine knowledge, it must be 

made to rest on a permanent intuition, as the indispensable condi- 
tion of the objective reality of a < on. ept, that is, as that by which 
alone the object can be given. In internal intuition, however, we 
have nothing permanent, for the Ego is only the consciousness of 
my thinking; and if we do not go beyond this thinking, we are 
without the necessary condition for applying the concept of sub- 

1 The thinking is taken in each of the two premisses in a totally different 
meaning: — in the major, as it refers to an object in general (and therefore 
also as it may be given in intuition), but in the minor, only as it exists in its 
relation to self-consciousness, where no object is thought of, but where we 
only represent the relation to the self as the subject fas the form of thought). 
In the former, things are spoken of that cannot be conceived otherwise than 
as subjects; while in the second we do not speak of things, but of the thinking 
(abstraction being made of all objects), wherein the Ego always serves as the 
subject of consciousness. The conclusion, therefore, ought not to be that I 
cannot exist otherwise than as a subject, but only, that in thinking my existence 
I can use myself as the subject of a judgment only. This is an identical 
proposition, and teaches us nothing whatever as to the mode of our existence. 



Supplement XXVII 797 

stance, that is, of an independent subject, to the self, as a thinking 
being. Thus the simplicity of the substance entirely disappears 
with the objective reality of the concept : and is changed into 
a purely logical qualitative unity of self-consciousness in thinking 
in general, whether the subject be composite or not. 



Refutation of Mendelssohn's Proof of the Permanence of the Soul 

This acute philosopher perceived very quickly how the ordinary 
argument that the soul (if it is once admitted to be a simple 
being) cannot cease to exist by decomposition, was insufficient to 
prove its necessary continuance, because it might cease to exist 
by simply vanishing. He therefore tried, in his Phaedon, to prove 
that the soul was not liable to that kind of perishing which would 
be a real annihilation, by endeavouring to show that a simple 
being cannot cease to exist, because as it could not be diminished, 
and thus gradually lose something of its existence, and be changed, 
by little and little, into nothing (it having no parts, and therefore 
no plurality in itself), there could be no time between the one 
moment in which it exists, and the other in which it exists no 
longer ; and this would be impossible. 

He did not consider, however, that, though we might allow to 
the soul this simple nature, namely, that it contains nothing mani- 
fold, nothing by the side of each other, and therefore no extensive 
quantity, yet we could not deny to it, as little as to any other 
existing thing, intensive quantity, i.e. a degree of reality with 
respect to all its faculties, nay, to all which constitutes its exist- 
ence. Such a degree of reality might diminish by an infinite 
number of smaller degrees, and thus the supposed substance (the 
thing, the permanence of which has not yet been established), 
might be changed into nothing, not indeed through decomposi- 
tion, but through a gradual remission of its powers, or, if I may 
say so, through elanguescence. For even consciousness has always 
a degree, which admits of being diminished, 1 and therefore also 

1 Clearness is not, as the logicians maintain, the consciousness of a repre- 
sentation; for a certain degree of consciousness, though insufficient foi 



plement XXVtl 

culty "i" being conscious of oneself, as well as all other 
facull 

The permanence of the soul, therefore, considered merely as 
an object of tl remains undemonstrated and tin- 

demonstrable, though us permanence in life, while the thinking 
in. ui) is at tlu- same tune t«> itself an object of the 
external sense . - by itself. But tins dues not .satisfy the 

rational psj :, who undertakes t<> prove, from men' con 

cepts, the absolute permanence of tlu- soul, even beyond this 
life. 1 



lection, must •> in main- darl ntations, because without all 

ibould make no distim don in tin- i onne< Hod <>i dark repre- 
sentations, uhu h i with the //■.'.•- of many concepts 
as thee the musician does who in improvising 

reset tation is i lear in whi< li the con- 
- lufficienl i li the 

ifficient for distinguishing, but n ns< iousness of the 

difference, the representation w..ul<l still have t- be called dark. There is, 
re, an infinite number of decrees ol mess, down to its com- 

plete vanishing. 

1 Those who, in establishing the possibility of a new theory, imagine that 
they have done enough if they can show triumphantly that no one tan show 

a contradiction in their prem »es i< thoa who believe that they under- 
stand the possibility of thinking, of which they have an example in the empiri- 
cal intuitions of human life only, even after the cessation of life) can be greatly 
emharrasse 1 by other ; >ries, which are not a whit bolder than their 

own. Such is, f-r instance, the possibility of a division of simple substance into 
several, or of the coalition of several suhstances into one simple substance, 
for although divisibility presupposes a composite, it does not necessarily re- 
quire a composite of suhstances, hut of degrees only (of the manifold faculties) 
of one and the same substance. As, then, we may conceive all powers and 
faculties of the soul, even that of consciousness, as diminished by one-half, the 
substance still remaining, we may also represent to ourselves, without any con- 
tradiction, that extinguished half as preserved, though not within it, but outside 
it, so that as the whole of what is real in it and has a degree, and therefore 
the whole existence of it, without any rest, has been halved, another separate 
substance would arise apart from it. For the plurality, which has been 
divided, existed before, though not as a plurality of substances, yet of every 
reality as a quantum of existence in it, and the unity of substance was only a 
mode of existence, which by mere division has been changed into a plurality 



Supplement XXVII 799 

If now we take the above propositions in synthetical connection, 
as indeed they must be taken, as valid for all thinking beings, in 
a system of rational psychology, and proceed from the category of 
relation, with the proposition, all thinking beings, as such, are 
substances, backwards through the series till the circle is com- 
pleted, we arrive in the end at their existence, and this, according 
to that system,' they are not only conscious of, independently of 
external things, but are supposed to be able to determine it even 
of themselves (with respect to that permanence which necessarily 
belongs to the character of substance). Hence it follows, that in 
this rationalistic system idealism is inevitable, at least problematical 
idealism, because, if the existence of external things is not required 
at all for the determination of one's own existence in time, their 
existence is really a gratuitous assumption of which no proof can 
ever be given. 

If, on the contrary, we proceed analytically, taking the proposi- 
tion, I think, which involves existence (according to the category 

of substantiality. In the same manner several simple substances might coalesce 
again into one, nothing being lost thereby, but merely the plurality of substan- 
tiality; so that one substance would contain in itself the degree of reality of 
all former substances together. We might suppose that the simple substances 
which give us matter as a phenomenon (not indeed through a mechanical or 
chemical influence upon each other, but yet, it may be, by some unknown 
influence, of which the former is only a manifestation), produce by such a 
dynamical division of parental souls, taken as intensive quantities, what may 
be called child-souls, while they themselves repair their loss again through a 
coalition with new matter of the same kind. I am far from allowing the 
slightest value of validity to such vague speculations, and I hope that the 
principles of our Analytic have given a sufficient warning against using 
the categories (as, for instance, that of substance) for any but empirical pur- 
poses. But if the rationalist is bold enough to create an independent being 
out of the mere faculty of thought, without any permanent intuition, by which 
an object can be given, simply because the unity of apperception in thought 
does not allow him to explain it as something composite, instead of simply 
confessing that he cannot explain the possibility of a thinking nature, why 
should not a materialist, though he can as little appeal to experience in 
support of his theories, be entitled to use the same boldness, and use his 
principle for the opposite purpose, though retaining the formal unity on 
which his opponent relied ? 



< s oo Supplement XX VII 

oi modality) as given, and analyse it, in order to find our whether, 
and how, the Ego determines its existence in space and time by 

it alone, the propositions of rational psychology would not start 

from the concept of a thinking being, in general, but from a reality, 
and the inference would consist in determining from the manner 
in which that reaiit) is thought, after everything that is empirical 
in it has been removed, what belongs toa thinking being in gen- 
eral. This may be shown by the following Table. 

i . 
1 think. 

3- 
simple Subject, 
-I- 
.is identical Subje< i. 
in evi of my thought. 

As it has not been determined in the second proposition, whether 
1 can exist and be conceived to exist as a subject only, and not 
also as a predicate of something else, the concept of subject is 
here taken as logical only, and it remains undetermined whether 
we are to understand by it a substance or not. In the third 
proposition, however, the absolute unity of" apperception, the 
simple I, being the representation to which all connection or 
separation (which constitute thought) relate, assumes its own 
importance, although nothing is determined as yet with regard 
to the nature of the subject, or its subsistence. The appercep- 
tion is something real, and it is only j possible, if it is simple. In 
space, however, there is nothing real that is simple, for points 
(the only simple in space) are limits only, and not themselves 
something which, as a part, serves to constitute space. From 
this follows the impossibility of explaining the nature of myself, 
as merely a thinking subject, from the materialistic point of view. 
As, however, in the first proposition, my existence is taken for 
granted, for it is not said in it that every thinking being exists 
(this would predicate too much, namely, absolute necessity of 
them), but only, / exist, as thinking, the proposition itself is 
empirical, and contains only the determinability of my existence, 



Supplement XXVII 80 1 

in reference to my representations in time. But as for that pur- 
pose again I require, first of all, something permanent, such as 
is not given to me at all in internal intuition, so far as I think 
myself, it is really impossible by that simple self-consciousness to 
determine the manner in which I exist, whether as a substance 
or as an accident. Thus, if materialism was inadequate to ex- 
plain my existence, spiritualism is equally insufficient for that 
purpose, and the conclusion is, that, in no way whatsoever can 
we know anything of the nature of our soul, so far as the possi- 
bility of its separate existence is concerned. 

And how indeed should it be possible by means of that unity 
of consciousness which we only know because it is indispensable 
to us for the very possibility of experience, to get beyond expe- 
rience (our existence in life), and even to extend our knowledge 
to the nature of all thinking beings in general, by the empirical, 
but, with reference to every kind of intuition, undetermined 
proposition, I think. 

There is, therefore, no rational psychology, as a doctrine, fur- 
nishing any addition to our self-knowledge, but only as a discipline, 
fixing unpassable limits to speculative reason in this field, partly 
to keep us from throwing ourselves into the arms of a soullos 
materialism, partly to warn us against losing ourselves in a vague, 
and, with regard to practical life, baseless spiritualism. It reminds 
us at the same time to look upon this refusal of our reason to 
give a satisfactory answer to such curious questions, which reach 
beyond the limits of this life, as a hint to turn our self-knowledge 
away from fruitless speculations to a fruitful practical use — a use 
which, though directed always to objects of experience only, 
derives its principle from a higher source, and so regulates our 
conduct, as if our destination reached far beyond experience, 
and therefore far beyond this life. 

We see from all this, that rational psychology owes its origin 
to a mere misunderstanding. The unity of consciousness, on 
which the categories are founded, is mistaken for an intuition 
of the subject as object, and the category of substance applied 
to it. But that unity is only the unity in thought, by which alone 
no object is given, and to which, therefore, the cal sub- 

3F 



tylement XX\ II 

. which always presupposes a given intuition y cannot be 
applied, and therefore the subject cannot be known. The sub- 
ject of the categories, therefore, cannot, by thinking them, receive 
a com ept of itself, as an obje< 1 of the categories ; tor In order to 
think the categories, it must presuppose it- purr self-conscious- 
thing that had to be explained. In like manner 
tbject, in which the representation of time has its original 
source, cannot determine l>y it its own existence in time; and if 
the latter is impossible, the former, as a determination of oneself 
(a- of .1 thinking being in general) by means of the categi 
tally -so. 1 

• •••*•** 

Thus vanishes, as an idle dream, that knowledge which was to 
go beyond the limits of possible experience, and was connected 
no doubt with the highest interests ol humanity, so far at least 

1 The ' I think . tated, an empirical proposition, and con- 

rithin itself the propositi a, 1 grist. I cannot say, however, everything 

which thinks l in that case the property of thinking would make all 

rings. I berel re, my existence cannot, as 
1 as derived from the proposition, I think 
(for in that case the major, everything that thinks exists, ought to have pre- 
ceded), hut is identical with it. It expresses an indefinite empirical intuition, 
that is. a perception (and proves, therefore, that this proposition, asserting 
existence, is itself based <»n sensation, which belongs to sensibility), but it 
precedes experience, which is meant to determine the object of perception 
through the categories in respect to time. Existence, therefore, is here not 
yet a category, which never refers to an indefinitely given object, but only to 
one of which we have a concept, and of which we wish to know whether it 
exists also apart from that conception or no. An indefinite perception sig- 
nifies here something real only that has been given merely for thinking in 
general, not therefore as a phenomenon, nor as a thing by itself (noumenon), 
but as something that really exists and is designated as such in the proposition, 
I think. For it must be observed, that if I have called the proposition, I 
think, an empirical proposition, I did not mean to say thereby, that the ego in 
that proposition is an empirical representation; it is rather purely intellectual, 
because it belongs to thought in general. Without some empirical represen- 
tation, however, which supplies the matter for thought, the act, I think, 
would not take place, and the empirical is only the condition of the applica 
tion or of the use of the pure intellectual faculty. 



Supplement XXVII S03 

as speculative philosophy was to supply it. Yet no unimportant 
service has thus been rendered to reason by the severity of our 
criticism, in proving, at the same time, the impossibility of settling 
anything dogmatically with reference to an object of experience, 
beyond the limits of experience, and thus securing it against all 
possible assertions to the contrary. This can only be done in 
two ways, either by proving one's own proposition apodictically, 
or, if that does not succeed, by trying to discover the causes of 
that failure, which, if they lie in the necessary limits of our reason, 
must force every opponent to submit to exactly the same law of 
renunciation with reference to any claims to dogmatic assertion. 

Nothing is lost, however, by this with regard to the right, nay, 
the necessity of admitting a future life, according to the princi- 
ples of practical, as connected with the speculative employment 
of reason. It is known besides, that a purely speculative proof 
has never been able to exercise any influence on the ordinary 
reason of men. It stands so entirely upon the point of a hair, 
that even the schools can only keep it from falling so long as 
they keep it constantly spinning round like a top, so that, even 
in their own eyes, it yields no permanent foundation upon which 
anything could be built. The proofs which are useful for the 
world at large retain their value undiminished, nay, they gain in 
clearness and natural power, by the surrender of those dogmatical 
pretensions, placing reason in its own peculiar domain, namely, 
the system of ends, which is, however, at the same time the 
system of nature ; so that reason, as a practical faculty by itself, 
without being limited by the conditions of nature, becomes justi- 
fied in extending the system of ends, and with it, our own exist- 
ence, beyond the limits of experience and of life. According to 
the analogy with the nature of living beings in this world, in 
which reason must necessarily admit the principle that no organ, 
no faculty, no impulse, can be found, as being either superfluous 
or disproportionate to its use, and therefore purposeless, but that 
everything is adequate to its destination in life, man, who alone 
can contain in himself the highest end of all this, would W the 
only creature excepted from it. For, his natural dispositions, not 
only so far as he uses them according to his talents and impulses, 



Supplement XX VII 

but more especially the moral law within him, go so far beyond 
all that is useful and advantageous in this life, that he is taughl 
thereby, in the absence of all advantages, even of tin- shadowy 
hope of posthumous fame, t>> esteem tin- mere consciousness of 
righteousness beyond everything fist-, feeling an inner call, by 

onduct m tins world and a surrender oi many advantages, 
1. 1 render himself tit to become the citizen ot' a better world, which 
exists in his idea only. This powerful and incontrovertible proof, 

npanied by our constantly increasing recognition of a design 
pervading all that we see around us, and by a contemplation of 
the immensity of creation, and therefore also by the consciousness 
of an unlimited possibility in the extension of our knowledge, and 
i ommensurate therewith, all this remains and always will 
remain, although we must surrender the hope of ever being able 
to understand, from the mere theoreti* a] knowledge of ourselves, 
the necessary < ontinuani e of our existence. 

-(■fusion of the Solution of the Psychological Paralogism 

The dialectical illusion in rational psychology arises from our 
confounding an idea of reason (that of a pure intelligence) with 
the altogether indefinite concept of a thinking being in general. 
What we are doing is. that we conceive ourselves for the sake of 
a possible experience, taking no account, as yet, of any real ex- 
perience, and thence conclude that we are able to become con- 
scious of our existence, independently of experience and of its 
empirical conditions. We are, therefore, confounding the possible 
abstraction of our own empirically determined existence with the 
imagined consciousness of a possible separate existence of our 
thinking self, and we bring ourselves to believe that we know the 
substantial within us as the transcendental subject, while what we 
have in our thoughts is only the unity of consciousness, on which, 
as on the mere form of knowledge, all determination is based. 

The task of explaining the community of the soul with the 
body does not properly fall within the province of that psychology 
of which we are here speaking, because that psychology tries to 
prove the personality of the soul, apart also from that community 



Supplement XX VII 

(after death), being therefore transcendent, in the proper sense of 
that word, inasmuch as, though dealing with an object of experi- 
ence, it deals with it only so far as it has ceased to be an object 
of experience. According to our doctrine, however, a sufficient 
answer may be returned to that question also. The difficulty of 
the task consists, as is well known, in the assumed heterogeneous- 
ness of the object of the internal sense (the soul), and the objects 
of the external senses, the formal condition of the intuition with 
regard to the former being time only, with regard to the latter, 
time and space. If we consider, however, that both kinds of 
objects thus differ from each other, not internally, but so far only 
as the one appeals externally to the other, and that possibly what 
is at the bottom of phenomenal matter, as a thing by itself, may 
not be so heterogeneous after all as we imagine, that difficulty 
vanishes, and there remains that one difficulty only, how a com- 
munity of substances is possible at all ; a difficulty which it is not 
the business of psychology to solve, and which, as the reader will 
easily understand, after what has been said in the Analytic of 
fundamental powers and faculties, lies undoubtedly beyond the 
limits of all human knowledge. 

General Note on the Transition from Rational Psychology to 

Cosmology 

The proposition, I think, or, I exist thinking, is an empirical 
proposition. Such a proposition is based on an empirical intuition, 
and its object is phenomenal : so that it might seem as if, accord- 
ing to our theory, the soul was changed altogether, even in think- 
ing, into something phenomenal, and our consciousness itself, as 
merely phenomenal, would thus indeed refer to nothing. 

Thinking, taken by itself, is a logical function only, and there- 
fore pure spontaneity, in connecting the manifold of a merely 
possible intuition. It does not represent the subject of conscious- 
ness, as phenomenal, for the simple reason, that it takes no account 
whatsoever of the manner of intuition, whether it be sensuous or 
intellectual. I do not thereby represent myself to myself, either 
as I am, or as I appear to myself, but I only conceive of m)self, 



806 Supplement AW 17/ 

as of any other object, without taking account of the manner of 
intuition. It" thereby 1 represent myself as the subject of my 
thoughts, or as the ground of thinking, these modes of representa- 
tion are not the categories of miIm.iih e Or cause, because these 
are functions of thought (judgment) as applied already to our 
sensuous intuition, sin h sensuous intuition being necessary, if I 

wish to know myself. But I only wish to become conscious of 

i .is thinking, and as I take no account of what my own self 

may be as a phenomenon, it is quite possible that it might be a 
phenomenon only to me, who thinks, but not to me, so far as I am 
thinking. In the consciousness of myself in mere thinking I am 
-. but of that substance nothing is thus given 
me tor thinkn 

The proposition I think, if it means / exist thinking, is not 
merely logical function, but determines the subject (which then 
is at the same time obje* t) with reference to its existence, and is 

impossible without the internal sense, the intuition of which always 

supplies the object, not as a thing by itself, but as phenomenal 
only. Here, therefore, we have no longer mere spontaneity of 

thinking, but also receptivity of intuition, that is, the thinking of 
myself applied to the empirical intuition of the same subject. In 

that empirical intuition the thinking self would have to look for 
the conditions under which its logical functions can be employed 
as categories of substance, cause, etc., in order not only to dis- 
tinguish itself as an object by itself, through the Ego, but to deter- 
mine the mode of its existence also, that is, to know itself as a 
noumenon. This, as we know, is impossible, because the internal 
empirical intuition is sensuous, and supplies us with phenomenal 
data only, which furnish nothing to the object of the pure con- 
sciousness for the knowledge of its own separate existence, but 
can serve the purpose of experience only. 

Supposing, however, that we should hereafter discover, not in- 
deed in experience, but in certain (not only logical rules, but) a 
priori established laws of pure reason, concerning our existence, 
some ground for admitting ourselves, entirely a priori, as deter- 
mining and ruling our own existence, there would then be a spon- 
taneity by which our reality would be determinable without the 






Supplement XXVII 807 

conditions of empirical intuitioji, and we should then perceive 
that in the consciousness of our existing there is contained a 
priori something which may serve to determine with respect to 
some inner faculty, our existence, which otherwise can be deter- 
mined sensuously only with reference to an intelligible, though, of 
course, an ideal world only. 

This, however, would not in the least benefit the attempts of 
rational psychology. For though through that wonderful faculty, 
which becomes first revealed to myself by the consciousness of 
a moral law, I "should have a principle, purely intellectual, for a 
determination of my existence, what would be its determining 
predicates ? No other but those which must be given to me in 
sensuous intuition ; and I should therefore find myself again in 
the same situation where I was before in rational psychology, re- 
quiring sensuous intuitions in order to give significance to the 
concepts of my understanding, such as substance, cause, etc., by 
which alone I can gain a knowledge of myself; and these in- 
tuitions can never carry me beyond the field of experience. Nev- 
ertheless, for practical purposes, which always concern objects of 
experience, I should be justified in applying these concepts, in 
analogy with their theoretical employment, to liberty also and to 
the subject of liberty, by taking them only as logical functions of 
subject and predicate, 1 of cause and effect. According to them, 
acts or effects, as following those (moral) laws, would be so deter- 
mined that they may together with the laws of nature be explained 
in accordance with the categories of substance and cause ; though 
arising in reality from a totally different principle. All this is 
only meant to prevent a misunderstanding to which our doctrine, 
which represents self-intuition as purely phenomenal, might easily 
be exposed. In what follows we shall have occasion to make 
good use of it. 

1 It is necessary to put a comma after Pradicats, 



SUPPLEMENT XXVIII 

\ ol. ii. p. 426J 



I urn sometimes called it formal idealism also, in order to dis- 
tinguish it from the material or common idealism, which doubts 
or denies the very existence of external things. In some < 
seems advisable to use these terms rather than those in the text, 

in order to prevent all misunderstanding. (This is an additional 
note in the Second Edition.) 

80S 



WORKS ON PHILOSOPHY. 



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HILL. — Genetic Philosophy. By David Jayne Hill, President of the 
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